Chapter 13

Michael and Keith showed up the next day to bring her back to Bible Camp when Aunt Sandra was done with her. Keith immediately took off his Oakleys and wrapped her a big hug, careful not to squash her middle.
She laughed. “What’s this for?” she asked. Keith was not usually the affectionate type.
He refused to be fazed. “Hey, when people come back from the dead, they get a hug. And that’s that.”
He looked around. “You got a bag or anything?” he asked, replacing the sunglasses.
“We kind of left in a hurry,” Jesse explained. She’d almost forgotten the events of yesterday, and her reason for being here.
Michael watched the display of emotion as good-humouredly as Jesse accepted it. At this point in time, he had no reason to think there was anything to worry about from that corner. Keith was a nice guy, but he was a pretty-boy who belonged on a beach in California, complete with a surfboard and an orange tan. It was a cruel twist of fate that had landed him in Northern Ontario. In Michael’s mind that was enough to dismiss the idea of anything going on between him and Jesse, now or in the future. Their friendship was one of long-standing respect and familiarity, but it could not be intimacy.
“Did your cousin come to see you?” he asked her as they left.
“No, my aunt said he was in town with some friends last night,” was her reply.
Michael fixed her eye. “So you were here alone the whole time?” He didn’t like that idea.
She shrugged and said casually, “It was only one night. Aunt Sandra was around if I needed anything.”
“Did you?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you need anything?”
“No,” said Jesse, “I didn’t.” She got in the passenger side door that he’d opened for her.
Michael thought he heard hesitation in her voice. “Did you sleep alright?” he asked as they backed out of the parking space.
“No dreams of trains rushing toward you?” Keith teased from the back.
She was glad for the second question. “No,” she was able to say honestly. “No trains, no bad dreams at all.” By the time she’d fallen asleep, her mind was too overworked to leave energy for dreams. She’d slept soundly enough, for the two or three hours she’d gotten.
“Hey!” said Keith suddenly, as Michael started the engine. He leaned forward urgently, like something just came to him, “Wasn’t May afraid of trains?”
Jesse was surprised at the mention of her sister. “She was terrified of them,” she affirmed. “She had nightmares all the time.”
“I thought so.”
Michael could only listen. This being only his second year at camp, he hadn’t known May. He’d heard stories, unavoidably, but he felt like an intruder when he did; especially now, with Jesse here.
Keith, on the other hand, had known May since she started working there. She’d been fourteen, he’d been sixteen. He could talk about her now with ease.
“Bob used to stop the van on the tracks to tease her, when they took kids out rapelling,” he said. “I was with them once, it was hilarious! I didn’t think May was capable of getting mad, she was usually so quiet and sweet-looking, but if you’d seen the look she gave him!” He, beach boy Keith, almost looked reflective as he spoke, remembering, presumably, the fury in May’s face.
“She came to Moose Creek with us,” Jesse mused. “And she crossed the bridge.”
Keith shook his head. “Only a couple of times, her last year. She got asked a lot, but she’d usually beg off. Until you started going. She went when you did.”
Jesse started, turning around to face him. “Are you sure?” she asked, incredulously.
“Yep,” Keith asserted. “If you were in a group that wanted to go, she’d either make an excuse for not letting them, or she’d go along. Shocked the whole office the first time she actually agreed to it.”
“I’ll bet she never took her eyes off you,” Michael surprised himself by saying.
“I never noticed,” she said.
Keith added his agreement to Michael’s guess. It seemed to be the consensus. No one was willing to draw any more connections, or make any other conclusions, however. At least, not out loud. What it meant, if anything, was for each to ponder on their own.
Jesse looked at Michael without seeing him. He could tell she was somewhere else, thinking, wondering, trying to remember. It was obvious she hadn’t thought about this before; and he felt certain she would have, if she’d been thinking about the accident yesterday. So she hadn’t been thinking about trains last night. What had occupied her thoughts, then? It must be the baby. There was some sort of complication with it, and she was worried. It was craziness, having so many worries to choose between.
“Hey, is there an ice cream place or anything like that around here?” Michael asked.
Jesse pointed out the Hanger Drive-In up ahead, and he pulled into the parking lot.
“Are you trying to cheer me up?” she asked suspiciously.
“Well, we’re missing lunch at camp anyway,” he reasoned.
Keith and Jesse grabbed a picnic table while Michael ordered fries and drinks at the window.
“Nice place,” Keith observed while they waited. The orange paint on the tables was peeling badly, and the colour sat badly against the fresh blue and white stripes of the building, which managed to look neglected despite the new paint. There were three dilapidated trucks parked on what used to be the lawn, for all appearances permanent fixtures. The grass was shamefully overgrown, and there were no other customers in sight. “You know how to pick them.”
Jesse well understood Keith’s sarcasm. “It’s getting more and more run down every year,” she agreed, but sadly. “It was great when I was a kid, but it’s changed owners a lot since then, and none of them can make a go of it.”
“Might have something to do with the colour,” Keith conjectured. “Blue doesn’t really stand out, especially to cars going by fast.” The diner was just off the same highway as Jesse’s grandparents’ house, but on the other side. “I’m assuming it used to be orange,” he said, looking at their table.
“That it was,” said Jesse. “A great colour. Couldn’t miss it.”
Michael rejoined them, apologetically. “I think the food’s going to be a while. There’s only one lady in there, and she doesn’t look too quick.”
“What!” Keith exclaimed, trying his hand at being outraged. “Man, one thing you should be able to count on in this country is fast food. I am not pleased.” He thumped the shabby orange picnic table with his fist. “I am not pleased at all.” He really was charming, pretending to be angry. “This definitely calls for some strongly worded complaining.”
“Be my guest,” Michael offered. “See if you can strong-word our french fries here any faster.”
“I think I will,” said Keith, and he walked off, no doubt to flirt mercilessly with the poor woman.
“Do you think that was smart?” Jesse asked Michael.
“Aw, she looked like she could use some cheering up. He can’t do any harm.”
Jesse eyed him.
“Well, he can’t do much harm,” he amended. “Anyway, how am I supposed to contend with fury like that?”
“Aw, you could’a taken him,” she gushed.
“Well, I am a rather fine specimen, aren’t I?” He lifted a lean arm proudly. “Look at that, pure muscle.”
“So I see,” said Jesse, pretending to be impressed, “have you been working out?”
“Better: mowing lawns. No one would pay me to lift weights.”
“Understandably,” Jesse nodded.
“Wanna arm wrestle?” Michael asked, leaning over the table, extending his hand in a playful invitation. “Come on, I’ll go easy on you.”
Jesse started to laugh him off. Michael wasn’t exactly a body-builder, but even so she knew she didn’t have a chance. Besides, she hated arm wrestling, even when she was more evenly paired. It was the one game that really bothered her to lose. But something stopped her from refusing. For some reason, she found she really wanted to test her mettle against his. She met his eyes, and put her right elbow on the table. They grasped hands.
“Go!” he said.
She pushed, and he met her force steadily. “Come on,” he prompted, “you can do better than that.”
She gritted her teeth and pushed harder. His hand didn’t budge, not to her surprise.
He leaned his head in and spoke softly and firmly. “You’re stronger than that. Make me work for it.” His eyes locked hers. “Make me work,” he said, grinning faintly.
“You’re going to win anyway,” she argued.
“That shouldn’t matter.”
“It’s a pointless fight,” she protested angrily.
“So if you don’t put all your effort into it, it doesn’t hurt so bad when you lose, is that it?” he asked. “Because if you’re sweating and out of breath at the end, the loss is more humiliating? That’s it, isn’t it?” he said confidently.
It sounded condescending to Jesse. “It’s called cutting your losses,” she growled, pushing a little harder.
He looked at her sadly. “Losing is doing less than your best.”
“I can’t beat you,” she argued again.
“You’re not even trying.”
“Neither are you,” she countered angrily.
His eyebrows raised in amusement, then he began to slowly force her hand toward the table. As soon as she felt the added pressure, she suddenly began to fight back. Self-consciousness forgotten, her eyes fixed on their intertwined fingers and her muscles strained against his. But when he started letting her gain back lost ground, her hostile look into his eyes made him honest again, and they teetered once again toward her side. He was having to work just a little bit for the win, and that pleased him.
The look of satisfaction on his face, however, was misunderstood by Jesse. A bear-like roar erupted from her throat, and with both hands, plus a good deal of her upper body weight, she wrestled his hand to the table.
Keith set their food down on the table and clapped his congratulations. “Highly illegal, but impressive,” he offered. He sat down between them and held up his hands: “Shall we pray?” he asked, and then gave thanks.
Michael was smiling when Keith finished grace. “I only wanted you to try. I wasn’t insinuating you should cheat, you know.”
Demurely, Jesse smoothed her hair back behind her ears and reached for a milkshake. “Well if I was going to try, I wasn’t going to lose.”
“And the fact that you won unfairly doesn’t bother you?” he wondered aloud.
She shrugged nonchalantly. “I couldn’t beat you fairly. You knew that, so there was no point in challenging me in the first place if you didn’t expect me to cheat,” she reasoned. She dipped a french fry in ketchup and ate, unafflicted by pangs of conscience.
“I’ll remember that in the future.”
************************************************************
Before she was half-way down the hill she heard a truck pull over. Glancing behind her, she saw Jeremy getting in, and then someone after him. The cab light went on as he opened the door, illuminating the driver. Something about it made her uneasy, although she couldn’t say what, until she realized there were no headlights blinding her. She kept walking, but it was just odd enough that she couldn’t help looking up again as the dark truck passed, then slowed. It stopped a few metres in front of her.
A male emerged from the passenger side. Medium height, she supposed. Leather jacket. He leaned against the truck with his hands spread, the way the bad guys did on COPS when they got caught, with his head down as though in frustration. She jerked instinctively to a stop, until common sense prodded her on. She gulped, and shivered even more as her path brought her unavoidably closer to this angry-looking person.
“You got a smoke?” came the half-dead voice from his face, lifted sideways to look at her through shadowed eyes she couldn’t see.
Her head shook a negative answer and she walked on without even breaking stride.
“I said,” he barked, pushing himself off from the vehicle and whirling around to face her as she tried to pass, “you got a smoke?” he repeated.
“F--- man, leave her alone.”
Jesse barely recognized Jeremy’s voice through the open window. It was loud and angry, so different from his earlier, friendly tone. Worse even than how he had acted in school. But more worrisome was the fact that her way was now blocked: the leather-jacketed person was standing on the sidewalk ahead of her, and soon she would have to decide what to do, whether to stop or try to go around the obstacle. She stopped.
She did not like this person with his leather jacket. Who wore leather, anyway? It wasn’t even nice leather. It was shiny and full of metal - zippers, buttons, etc. It looked like something scary from the 80's. And he was standing in her way, directly in her way. It was beyond rude. How was she supposed to respond to that? It was all very strange, this whole situation was strange and cold and uncomfortable.
A door opened and slammed shut. “Come on, let’s go,” she heard Jeremy say to the menacing figure in front of her.
“Why are you in such a hurry, Jamie?” he asked.
It was too dark to see clearly, but she was convinced she saw an evil grin glaring ferociously at her, darkly animalistic. She took a step backwards.
“We’ve got all the fun we need right here.”
That was it. She didn’t care who thought what, she was leaving this deranged scene. Having finally made up her mind, she whirled around, and walked straight into Jeremy. She hadn’t realized he was so close. It was somewhat comforting to think he hadn’t completely abandoned her to be insulted by his friend. He’d always been nice to her, hadn’t he? They weren’t close, but he was good friends with Warren, Lisa’s boyfriend. Lisa had been her ‘sort-of best friend’ - the girl she hung out with more than anyone else in highschool. That connection, and the implications of it, flashed through her mind in the second it took for her to recognize him. Her relief was short-lived.
“Grab her.” The words from behind her were cold, clear, and toneless. Nothing had ever created in her more fear.
Until she felt Jeremy’s hand close around her wrist.