“Jesus!” I shouted, realizing it was Jack. “Good Lord, you scared the life out of me! What’re you doing out here?”
He didn’t say anything. He simply stared down at me in the sternest of fashion.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why were you talking to Rachel Haggerty?” he said, his tone sorely gruff.
Every muscle in my body tightened. “I’m-I’m sorry?”
“Don’t play dumb, Cassie. I got a call from an old friend of mine back in Arlington, telling me about two girls who happened to be snooping around and asking questions concerning me. Funny thing is, he said their names were Trish and Minnie, yet described them as a pretty black-haired girl and a redheaded agent-Barbie. Sound familiar?”
“Jack, I can explain-”
“Well, I’m all ears.”
His voice was still unwaveringly harsh, and it made it all the more difficult for me to find the right words. Where was I going to start? Suspecting him of kidnapping? Murder? The fact that I pried into his past?
“It’s curious, isn’t it? You always talk about respecting people’s boundaries, yet you seem to have no problem committing the offense that upsets you most in others,” he snarled.
“Gwen found an article,” I finally muttered, pulling out and unfolding the paper I had tucked in the pocket of my pants. I handed it over to him. “I’m sorry, but the coincidence was a bit too much for Gwen to brush off.”
“And she roped you into it, did she? Forced you to tag along?”
“No, I went based on my own curiosity.”
“And did you uncover anything groundbreaking? Perhaps find me on camera buying duct tape and a shovel?”
“... No, it’s just that... no one would talk about what really happened with you. No one would explain why the cops let you go. So we thought it wouldn’t hurt to take a look for ourselves.”
He was actually scaring me. Every step he took towards me, I retracted to keep our distance equal.
“But you still suspect me?”
“No, I just...”
“You what? You just needed an excuse to push me away?” He stepped closer and I suddenly found myself pinned up against the side of a car with no place left behind me to go. “Well, congratulations, Cassandra. It’s your lucky day.” He pulled out a piece of paper and pinned it to my chest.
It was a copy of a newspaper article, dated from October 12th of last year.
“The funeral service for Benjamin Phillip Matthews was held Sunday afternoon in the presence of friends and family, with the exception of his only son, Jack, who has been in a coma since October 3rd following the crash that claimed his father’s life. After the football game against Richmond, the Matthews’ jeep was broadsided in the intersection of Porter and Third when a drunk driver blew right through a red light, crashing into them at an estimated fifty miles an hour. Benjamin was pronounced dead on the scene and his son, quarterback for the Cougars, was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital in critical condition...”
It all made sense. Why he didn’t play football again. Why he was relieved of suspicion.
“Apparently, a little more investigative work would have been helpful,” he said, backing off. “Because simple math would have told you that it was physically impossible for me to have done any of this, given the fact that the last two girls disappeared while I wasn’t even conscious.”
I felt gutted. “Jack... I’m-”
“Save it,” he snarled. “You profess of loyalty and trust. Yet, one cannot be achieved without the other. And you, Cassie, have neither. You don’t trust anyone. You simply wait contentedly for the opportunity to walk away. And for someone who requires loyalty, you really aren’t an honest person either. Are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell me, how is it that a perfect, straight-A student nearly gets expelled after having the police called on her?”
I had just been hammered by a freight train.
“Where did you hear that?” I whimpered.
“Not so nice, is it? Having all your dirty, little secrets exposed? Seems we both have some tainted pasts before we moved to town. The difference is though, I didn’t judge you for yours.”
“How did you find that out?!” I growled as tears began to form.
He didn’t say anything else. He simply turned and left the lot, leaving me to fall in the abyss of emotions that I thought I had long put behind me.
Chapter 21
Wide Awake
“You up for Grayson’s Halloween bash tonight?” asked Ian, slinking up behind me as I dialed in my locker combo.
Thankfully, the weekend had given me a break from having to speak with Jack, and I had even managed to make it to that next Wednesday morning, yet I still felt as wrenched by the incident as the night we exchanged words.
“As if I have a choice,” I said, unlatching the door. “Gwen’s gonna have a conniption though. I didn’t bother looking for a costume. And I’m not going in my one from last year.”
“Appears someone here knows you better than that.” Ian swung a black shopping bag in front of my face.
“Do I even want to know what’s in this?” I asked, taking hold of it.
“Don’t worry. Gwen had nothing to do with it. This one’s on me,” he said. “I had a feeling you’d try to bail.”
I chuckled. “It’s a little scary just how well you know me.”
“Everyone needs a good scare every now and again.”
“Well, I’ve had too many of them as of late,” I said, putting the bag into my locker and closing it, “but your scares are always more than welcome. Thank you.”
“No problem,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. “I’ll see you after class?”
“Yep.”
Ian and I parted ways and I started heading towards English when I saw Jack coming towards me from a connecting hall. I avoided eye contact and charged past him without giving acknowledgement even after he called out my name. I kept walking, and actually picked up the pace a bit.
“Hey!” Jack’s riding boots trotted up from behind, yet I still didn’t waver. “Can we talk?”
His hand suddenly took hold of my upper arm, and the action forced me to stop as I ripped it free from his hold. “Can we talk?”
Nothing. I had no words for him. I simply, but firmly, turned and started walking away again.
He scoffed. “You know, if anybody should be pissed here, it’s me. What the hell’s the matter with you?”
I whizzed around and to both our surprises, I slapped him. “Stay the hell away from me.”
He stood awestruck and speechless by my reaction as everyone else in the hall gasped and started making wisecracks. I didn’t bother staying around to hear any of them though. I hastened away, and when I heard Jack rushing up behind me again, I ducked into the women’s bathroom.
I dropped my book bag on the floor by the sink and ducked into a stall.
“Cassie, get out here,” ordered Jack as he entered, seeing my absence at the counter.
“For the love of God!” I barked, punching the stall door open and charging out. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?!”
“What the hell was that back there?” he said, checking out his cheek in the mirror.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve!”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I am NOT.” I got right up in front of him. “Anything I did in regard to you was never done with the intention to hurt you. I needed answers for my own reassurance, and that was all. What you dug up on me was out of pure malevolence. And I’m not even going to get into the fact that those records were sealed.”
I pushed past him, but he stuck his hand out against the door and I couldn’t pry it open.
“What happened?”
“You already know,” I sneered.
“No, I don’t think I do. If I did, I’d like to think I’d be able to understand your response here a bit better.”
He was wholly serious
, and I had had all I could take of this.
“Fine, you really want to know?” I said, turning to look him right in the eyes. “It happened back in January. It was after dark. I had gotten into a fight with my mother, and I snuck out of the apartment to hang with one of my friends in the school parking lot. We had been there for about a half hour, just talking. Suddenly, a cop car came barreling in, and my friend panicked. She apparently had marijuana on her, and she tossed it over the fence right by where we were parked. The officer saw it, but he couldn't tell which one of us did it. Someone had tipped him off that one of us was carrying, and he found the stash. We were both brought in on suspicion of possession, and since my supposed friend already had one mark on her record for it, she told the cops it was mine. They couldn’t prove anything for certain, but when the school got wind of this happening on their property they threatened to expel us. Given the circumstances that followed, I wound up not getting punished for any of it. In the end, I stopped hanging out with any of my so-called friends. They proved to be just as fickle as the girl who tried to lay the blame on me; hence my relocating here.”
“This happened in January?”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t fight the tears anymore.
“Cassie, what happened?”
“That night... there was a carbon monoxide leak in my apartment. The detectors somehow failed,” I muttered weakly. “That’s how my mom and sister died.”
His hand slid off the door.
“If I hadn’t gotten into an argument with my mother, I would have been in there when it happened. But I also can’t help but think that if none of the bullshit that took place with the cops had happened, I would have made it back there in time. I could have saved them,” I whispered.
Jack backed away.
“Now you know. Satisfied?” I pulled the door open and left him, but I wasn’t in any particular hurry to get to class despite the fact that the tardy bell sounded overhead.
When I walked late into English with my cheeks painted in wet streaks, Miss Tipton gave me one look and motioned for me to take a seat without reproof. She granted Jack the same freebee as he entered a moment later.
“Before we get started with today’s lesson plan, I’m happy to report that I have the results to everyone’s career aptitude tests you took a little while back,” said Miss Tipton, walking up and down the rows and handing out each form to its owner.
I looked over the paper for about half a minute before tossing it inside my binder, still reading over the answers now burnt into my memory. I found my thoughts straying away from Jane Eyre and more towards that sheet of paper. After a fuzzy hour and a half of gabbing and in-depth discussions, I fled the classroom the moment the dismissal bell sounded.
“Hey, hold up there, Roadrunner!” called out a voice from behind.
I spun around with relief to see Ian heading down the hall in my direction.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“Far away as possible,” I said exhaustedly. “You get your aptitude test back?”
“Yep.”
“And?”
“Inconclusive.”
“That’s what it said?”
“No, but I know they’re wrong, so my career possibilities are still ongoing. What’s with the long face?”
I shrugged.
“Jack?”
“Everything.”
“You wanna talk?”
“I don’t think it’s gonna do any good.”
“Well, at least give it a try.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “I feel like a world-class jackass for how I handled things with Jack, yet I’m now totally disgusted with him for what he did to me. Then I get this stupid piece of paper.”
I yanked the aptitude results out of my binder and tossed it to him.
“Says you’re best suited for a career in criminal justice. Is that a problem?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
“You’re gonna have to explain this one to me.”
“Call it a premature midlife crisis,” I said. “You know, what’s life? Why am I here? Why does high school suck? The usual.”
“Well, what would you say if I told you that I had a remedy for that?”
“You found life’s eternal happiness?”
“Yep, in the frozen goods section of the Mega Mart,” he chuckled. “Seriously though, I’ve got something that we can do that’ll take your mind off things. But, wait, what did Jack just do to you?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
Chapter 22
Radioactive
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” Ian said.
The colors of autumn faded away as we headed further down the street and deeper into the forest, where evergreens ruled the environs. Here, no season existed. It was everlasting greenery. The sweet fragrance of pine engulfed my senses, taking me back to warm summer hikes and Christmas morning all at once.
Ian pulled onto a small frontage road, which took us just shy to the mouth of the woods. He looked around, comforted by the isolation.
“Come on,” he said, turning off the engine and climbing out.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked again, following hesitantly behind him.
He didn’t answer. We kept walking to the end the forest border, where I was enraptured by the splendor of the sprawling ocean that rested just beneath us as we stood on the crown of a bluff. Gold skies laid behind us, dusk creeping up onto the horizon.
“This is like a dreamscape,” I said, still gawking in sheer awe.
“And we have it all to ourselves,” said Ian, letting his jacket slide off his shoulders.
He then pulled off his shirt, baring his slight, yet toned frame.
“I’m sorry? What are you doing?” I said, watching him kick off his shoes and unbutton his jeans next.
“What?”
“You know what. I told you in August that we weren’t going to do this again, at least not for a while.”
“Where’s your sense of fervor for life?”
“Back in the truck.”
“Come on, don’t be a chicken.”
I stood my ground.
“Fine, guess I’ll just have to do this by myself,” Ian said.
“You’re crazy.”
“Been called worse.”
He took one last look at me before running full tilt off the cliff with a pounce that catapulted him into a dive before crashing into the calm tides below. I ran and looked over the rock face, seeing him resurface a few seconds later.
“Let me guess, it’s cold?” I shouted down.
He shook his head. “No, actually it’s not! You coming down or what?”
“What are you doing, Cassie?” I muttered to myself as I began to undress.
Tossing my clothes into a heap beside Ian’s until I was in nothing but my bra and panties, I shook my arms out and bounced about a couple of times to relieve the manic that arose with a premature jolt of endorphins. No sense in postponing the inevitable. Letting every ounce of me to be consumed by the adrenaline, I leapt off too. With nothing under my feet but air, a natural serge of panic hit before the euphoria of the freefall washed over me as I dove into the water.
Before kicking back to the surface, I rested weightlessly below, watching the mild tides crash into the rocks of the coastline. Quiet. Calm. Safe. But then it hit.
I shot back up to the surface with the bitter numbness of the icy Atlantic Ocean prickling at every nerve.
“Goddamnit!” I screamed. “You are such a liar!”
“What?” Ian asked, managing to smirk over chattering teeth.
“It’s not cold, my ass!”
“I didn’t lie. It’s not cold. It’s freezing,” he laughed. “What did you expect it to be at the end of October?”
I splashed as much water at him as possible as my body trembled.
“Remember the first time I took you to do this?” Ian asked, gently stroking t
owards me.
I nodded. “April, down by Lover’s Leap.”
“Remember how you said you were afraid that you had turned everything off, that you felt like you were subconsciously trying to become numb to everything?”
I nodded again.
“And what did I say to you when we hit the similarly freezing waters? As long as you feel the pain...”
“... I’m still alive, which means I’m still capable of feeling.”
He extended his hand and pulled me in, my arms immediately wrapping around his neck. I welcomed the surging warmth pulsating from his skin.
“Thank you.”
Brushing a wet black strand of hair over my ear, he replied, “You’re stronger than you think.”
“Why are you so nice to me?”
He laughed.
“Seriously? I’m either uptight or in desperate need of rescuing,” I said. “What the hell is wrong with me?”
“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.”
“I know. That’s exactly what’s bothering me. As strange as this may sound, tutoring Jack actually taught me something.”
Disbelief washed over Ian’s face, along with a wave of amusement. “Sure this isn’t coming from the fact that your body might be going into hypothermic shock?”
“I’m serious,” I said, trying best to not laugh at myself for such a statement. “He made me question my motives for tutoring in the first place. You know I have a ninety-six percent in English? Yet, for reason, I went to Miss Tipton asking for extra credit to boost my grade. Why?!”
“You’re trying to build a better future for yourself,” replied Ian, but his tone suggested that the remark was more of a complete guess than a fact.
“I’m trying to be perfect, but I don’t know why,” I said. “I’ve always been a good student. Good grades, honor roll, didn’t cause any trouble at school. But that never seemed good enough. My mom always wanted me to do better. She always told me that if I put a little more effort into it that I could excel academically, which ensured a promising career. But I’ve never known what I really wanted to do with my life. She’s not here to badger me about getting into the best business school or to tell me what direction I should be heading in. So why am I still striving for a future that I don’t want? What does it matter if I have the best grades humanly possible if I don’t even know what college I want to go to? I don’t even have a profession that I’m so much as interested in, so I have to ask myself, why even go to college?”
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