Also, thank you to all the awesome people that reviewed any of Haze's chapters today! You guys are cool cats, for serious. And, since I like to put a spot-light on people (please don't hate me), I'd like to thank, in particular youngtalentkritz, Audy, Snoink, EvensLily, LindsayG, and WaitingForLife for giving me fawesome reviews today. I'm glad to know this doesn't stink. I worry sometimes. Hope you guys like this chapter if/when you get around to reading it.
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CHAPTER FIVE
School Ending in Missing
School Ending in Missing
THEN
The sky was beautiful. Jacksin couldn’t help but notice it, his head tilted back far enough his relatively short-shorn hair managed to brush the collar of his denim shirt. The sky was a darker blue, somewhat more vivid, more jewel-like. He could imagine an engagement ring with a stone its color. Wisps of clouds floated lazily by and the sharp limbs of dogwoods and birches slashed across his view.
He wished for a camera; something to take a good snapshot of this moment in time.
He then frowned, wondering since when he was so weird. Little things didn’t normally make people so happy, right?
He decided it probably had something to do with the tight white bandage on his arm; something that pulled on the hairs there when he moved it and had a deep pain to it, a constant throbbing that made him twitchy with anxiety. He’d felt odd ever since he got out of the hospital. It was like he was lighter. Everything was more beautiful.
He’d wonder if something dastardly was eating away at his brain, but, no. He was fine.
Maybe nearly seeing a guy eaten alive by dogs just made the simple things nicer. Who knew?
Actually, it was probably sort of likely that a lot of people were made to think the world was a brighter, nicer place after a sort-of-near-death-experience.
“So, what’s up, Mr. Dreamer?”
Jacksin’s head jerked slightly, something twinging in his neck as he spun slightly too fast to see Kellsie. He quickly took her in. He took in the grayish-green jean jacket; red-covered textbook, messy calender, and romance novel in her arms; and her playful eyes filled with a swarm of blue and green flickers the size of sand. She brushed some of her darkish brown hair behind her ear and gave him a coy smile.
He realized he probably should have said something by now.
“Uh, not much,” he admitted, feeling like he was flailing, even if he wasn’t. “Just waiting for the bell to ring.”
“Sounds boring.”
He shrugged and crossed his arms. Kellsie’s eyes caught on the bandage on his arm and her face quickly turned awkward.
“Accident?”
Jacksin lifted his hand and flexed his fingers. “Dog bite.”
“Ouch.” Kellsie’s brow furrowed. “I guess I’ll see you in English?”
“And art.”
“Right.”
Jacksin heard Blaze and Booker’s voices carry over to the red brick wall he stood by, sharp leaves of the holly bushes behind it dug into his clothes as he looked back at them. Blaze was zigzagging and walking backwards in front of a relatively pissed-looking Booker. A pale-ash blond girl walked beside Booker, seeming to get more and more frustrated by the minute.
It was enough to make Jacksin laugh under his breath, shaking his head.
He could see why so many people got red in the face and flounced off at the mention of Blaze. It really wasn’t rocket science. Blaze was just annoying.
“I’ll see you later.”
Jacksin looked back to Kellsie. Her eyes were now shuttered and her books hugged closer. Her eyes hadn’t left his arm.
“Okay?”
She stalked off without further adieu.
Maybe I should work on my social skills a bit.
He frowned.
***
Ever since a kid drove a truck filled with highly flammable explosives into a school in West Virginia, metal detectors had been added outside of school. That, and people still liked to flash penknives at each other in P.E. Jacksin had never gotten exactly why so many people found that enjoyable. The latter made more sense than the former, anyway.
He didn’t see how metal detectors stood a change against a truck going at eight miles an hour.
Needless to say, it was a hassle--especially for him. For some reason, the metal detectors decidedly hated him. He wasn’t sure why, or how, but no matter how many times he tried to re-empty his pockets, insured his belt was off and his backpack was on the conveyor belt thing, or took off his shoes, he still made them buzz.
Eventually, they decided it would make more sense for him to take off extra layers and wait for a pot-bellied, greasy-haired creepy to pat down his legs before he could go on in.
All in all, he had to wonder why that happened, but Blaze had declared it probably had something to do with BB guns. While Blaze had shot him plenty of times when they were kids, he was pretty sure he would have noticed if one of the little metal rounds got stuck under his skin.
Blaze had merely shrugged and said kids could be pretty oblivious.
Today he’d managed to go into the building without hassle, though, which was pretty awesome. It felt weird and people had given him funny looks, but he was sure they were just glad he wasn’t holding the line up this time.
He wondered if that dog had finally gotten that BB pellet or whatever out from under his skin. If so, he could probably thank it.
If the bite didn’t ache this badly, of course.
“Mr. Pelley?”
Jacksin froze mid-step. He knew he must have done something wrong. Maybe the machine broke?
He turned to see assistant principal Ms. Masters. Her hair was relaxed and stiff, sheets of black, as always and her smile was just as taut.
“We were informed you’d been injured. If you would, please go to the nurse’s office so she can take a look before you head off to class?”
“I’ve already been to the hospital.”
“We know. We just want to insure you don’t start bleeding in class.”
Jacksin raised an eyebrow, unable to help himself, and then nodded.
“Yeah, okay.”
The nurse’s office hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been in here; sprained wrist from being tackled by some crazy dude in P.E.
He swore P.E. was like a mental hospital riot. Really.
There was still that pot filled with ivy that grew down to the floor on a tiny table, the chairs for waiting, and then the two rooms; one bed in each. The carpet still had a horrible pattern and he was pretty sure the coffee table magazines hadn’t changed whatsoever.
His interest piqued at the sound of crying, though; some sort of primal, horrid sound that sort of made his hair stand on end. He shifted on his feet, just enough to see a dark-haired girl, pasty pale with too much clothes on, bent over, hands over her face, in the farthest room. The door was only open a crack, but the sound poured out.
He felt decidedly uncomfortable.
Nurse Dabbs came in then, white outfit holding her apart. She was a small, wrinkled hag with too big glasses and too big nose; but she had a stash of peanut M&Ms she’d share with anybody who looked ill-ish but not vomiting, so she was cool.
“Just go into the room and take a seat. They just want me to check the bandage because cleaning up bodily fluids has so much protocol these days,” she said, not looking up from the notes she held.
He nodded and started to walk to the first room, only to stop. “Is that girl okay?”
“Huh?” Nurse Dabbs looked up. “Who?”
“The girl in the room, crying.”
Nurse Dabbs looked towards the other room and sighed. “She just came in here, bawling. I assume she’s in the family way.” She flinched. “Don’t repeat that?”
Jacksin made a cross over his heart. Nurse Dabbs gave him a mild scowl. He wasn’t sure why, he wasn’t about to repeat anything he heard in here. He didn’t want his life broadcast, so why broadcast somebody else’s?
It made no sense.
He looked back through the crack in the door and felt some sort of puzzlement fall over him. Something seemed off, but he couldn’t place it. He noticed a bruise on the back of her neck and shivered.
He walked back to the room without another word.
***
“You’re ready to go,” Nurse Dabbs proclaimed.
She’d added a little more gauze, for no other reason than it looked better, probably, and Jacksin’s wrist felt more immobile than ever.
“If my fingers go black and fall off, I’m blaming you,” Jacksin informed her.
She snorted. “Come back if they even start to blue up, you idiot.”
Jacksin smiled. “Good day to you too, Dabbs.”
“Nurse Dabbs.”
“So, uh, where should I go now?” He looked about for a clock and, not finding one, was reminded that him not wearing a watch wasn’t his brightest idea.
Luckily, all Nurse Dabbs had to do was look down at her silvery old-lady watch. “You have math second block?”
“Yeah.”
“Go there.”
“If Blaze has tied up the teacher and made everything Lord of the Flies, may I come back?”
“No. I expect you to regain control of the situation.”
Jacksin laughed and walked out.
He was only mildly aware of the fact the girl was gone. Guilt settled in his stomach, just barely there, but there.
Maybe if he hadn’t had to come in, she would have stayed. Talked.
He decided not to think about it.
***
“I’m really surprised no one knows about what happened,” Blaze said.
Jacksin glanced up to see Blaze inspecting a green apple, it lit oddly by the ceiling lights in the lunch room. Blaze’s food was measly, half a peanut-butter-something sandwich and that apple. Jacksin looked down at his own and felt slightly sick. He pushed a granola bar, one of those health things he kept founding in the cabinets recently, towards Blaze. Blaze glanced down at it without a word, then went back to staring at the apple as if it held the meaning to life.
“What do you mean?” Booker asked, finally getting his nose out of his science textbook. His glances were perched funnily on his nose.
“About the dogs,” Blaze said. “No one has called me puppy-killer. I am surprised.”
Jacksin looked around. “Don’t say something like that quite so loudly,” he hissed.
“What?” Blaze blinked. “It’s not like--”
Blaze was cut off by a tawny-haired jock walking past bumping roughly into his back and his toted dark-haired girlfriend. The girl giggled than whispered, “Freaks.”
Jacksin dolefully looked from the girl’s retreating figure to Blaze, then back. “I think you spoke too soon.”
Blaze shrugged. “One new thing and I’m already like a duck to water when it comes to their not-so-inventive cattiness. Like I said, I was surprised no one had said anything yet.”
“Your mind must be a scary place,” Booker said.
Jacksin felt his skin crawl again, at just how sad Booker’s pale eyes seemed behind his glasses, pitying. Jacksin almost felt mad.
“You have no idea,” Blaze said. He sneered, eyes on the couple. “You know what I heard a couple days ago?”
“No gossip,” Jacksin quipped.
“Nah, I heard her say she was cheating on his useless arse.”
Chelsea down the table burst into laughter and Grace made doe eyes at Blaze.
“I’d never cheat on you,” she said.
Blaze smiled tightly. “Sure you wouldn’t.”
Grace fingered the cross around her neck. “Trust me, once you got me, I’m yours.”
“And it’s not like they’d hurt you or nothing,” Troy said. “They tried to, like recruit you or whatever freshman year. You still can whoop their asses, too.”
Chelsea nodded. “They’d stop if you just, you know, played along.”
It was true. He’d said it before and he’d say it again, Blaze wasn’t much liked, but he wasn’t much liked in a Huckleberry Finn sort of way. Nobody liked him, but everyone, somehow, wanted to be him.
He could do whatever he liked--and he did.
He was invited to all the parties, questioned every year by the coach on why he wasn’t on the football team like he was in middle school, and girls hung on his every word--even if they turned around and called him names when he turned them down every time the Sadie Hawkins dance turned around. They were impressed when he offered them to go out and have some fun, too; but they said no because they were mostly all good Christian girls and didn’t want to be called whores, as if what they pictured was Blaze’s idea of fun.
Yeah, Blaze would make a good Huck.
***
School had passed faster than he thought possible; a whirlwind of quick-flying boredom, an interesting history lesson, practice for an essay, and his insane art teacher deciding to get them to go up to the roof and see what they could see and then draw it.
Jacksin wasn’t Monet material by far, but he didn’t know how many people could make lovely art out of a sky that had no clouds, far off pine trees, a wide swath of concrete and rusted metal air conditioners and such, and a dead-grass football field.
He made it depressing, because it made him pretty depressed and it sort of made him expect, like, zombies or something..
Ms. Terra was not all that impressed.
Now, he was walking back to Sampson and Gianna’s, his backpack rhythmically slamming into his back rather painfully with each step, some sharp corner of a book having a field day with him, and Blaze was a few paces behind him as they climbed the minor hill that led from the southern school to their more northern houses. The sidewalk was still slippery from the rain they’d had a few days ago, he wasn’t sure how, and mimosa trees shaded them fairly well. Only, he was pretty sure something had died, because the road stank to high Hell.
Jacksin tried to mouth-breathe, but it felt unnatural and the smell seemed to permeate everything anyway, just to a lesser degree.
“Whatever that is, I’m surprised the buzzards aren’t circling,” Blaze mumbled. “I’m pretty sure even a few tens of feet up, I could still smell that.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Jacksin said, even if he did sort of agree with him.
“Whatever,” Blaze retorted. “I mean, what is that?”
“Probably a rabbit, or possum,” he said.
“We don’t have either of those things here,” Blaze said.
“Yeah we do.”
“Nah, we have foxes and stuff. Probably a dead cat, actually.”
“What do you think the foxes eat if not rabbits?”
“Cats.”
Jacksin’s nose wrinkled. “I’ve seen rabbits, anyway.”
“Maybe it’s a raccoon,” Blaze suggested.
“Why are we talking about dead things?” Jacksin hiked his backpack higher on his shoulder. “I mean, plenty happened at school today.”
“What, like Sandy interrupting lunch to tell us that we’re having a dance?” Blaze snorted. “I hate that girl.”
“No you don’t.”
“I’m pretty sure I do. No one cares about any of that, but she does. Clearly, she’s a Stepford robot or something. You know, like, in the movie.”
Jacksin laughed. “I’m pretty sure those were housewives, Blaze, not cheerleaders. They also wore, like, 50s clothes. Not cute tiny, tiny uniforms. That makes it ten times better.”
Blaze gave him an odd look. “You’re in art, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t Michelangelo make a point about the fact lifeless things aren’t pretty, that real, live humans are better?”
Jacksin shrugged. That sounded right, but he couldn’t quite remember. “So, I’m guessing you won’t be going to the dance, right?”
“Way to change the subject.” Blaze fell out of lockstep, slowing as the hill finally crested. Jacksin kept walking. “But, no, I’m not.”
“Come on, Grace has been wanting to do something with you for eons, just, like ask her and you’ll be fine.”
“Dances are stupid.”
“You just sounded like a rebellious ten-year-old boy.”
Blaze snorted. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to ask her out.”
“Why?”
“She’s obsessive and looks like a twelve-year-old.”
“I really don’t see that. I mean, she, you know, could be a total Lolita if allowed, I think, because she’s sort of disturbed in the head like most of the female population here about what they’re allowed to do, as if they aren’t their own person and stuff. But she’s cute and, you know, you could probably help with the whole expectation stuff and shiz. I mean, she’s kinda athletic and small, but she has a nice--” Jacksin paused. He was pretty sure something was wrong. He listened for a small second, wondering if something had been rustling in the trees or something to alert him to the fact, and then it hit him.
He stopped walking and all sound ceased.
Either Blaze had stopped at exactly the same time and wasn’t even breathing or whatever, or he’d walked off while he was talking. Jacksin turned around. No Blaze. He looked up and down the street, to the woods, and his shoulders slumped.
“Rude, much?”
Nobody and nothing answered him.
“Seriously, Blaze, not funny; not after the dog thing. You can’t just poof like that anymore.”
Silence.
“You can quit being a ninja now.”
Still nothing.
Jacksin frowned, feeling sort of like a cat forced to take a bath, and then shrugged. Whatever. Blaze could continue to be antisocial and weird for all he cared, running off mid-sentence.
He had homework to get to and Gianna would be pissed if he was late home.
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