Also, this is first draft, so I'm terribly sorry if not everything is right, and I did go through it, but it isn't chapter one. :c I'm sorry to dissapoint. I know everyone was so happy with the ultra-nice grammar I somehow magically managed in chapter one. Anyway, enjoy (if you can) and I hope this pleases you. Also, be aware that I'll probably go through and edit. EDIT: I have taken away some things and added on a bit.
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CHAPTER THREE
Flashing Lights (Part One)
THEN
Jacksin wasn’t quite sure how he wound up sitting on the back of an ambulance but he found it not to be an enjoyable experience from what he gathered. The middle-aged guy had been taken already to some hospital, or the ambulance he’d been put in had driven off, and Booker and Blaze had been checked for injuries while Jacksin sat and tried not to focus on the woman, an EMT, clearing his arm wound, stitching him up, and bandaging it. She said it looked like a dog bite, but it was hard to tell how it was. He’d nodded along, gaze over her dusty-blond head to focus on Blaze and Booker as they talked quietly by Blaze’s truck. The woman, Shelly, had said that they could test the dogs for rabies if he liked, but it would kill the dogs. He’d agreed to doing shots. He knew his parents could pay for them and he didn’t want three more dogs’ deaths on his hands.
He shuddered, a full body movement, and tried not to think about that. Yet, what good did trying not to think of something do? All he could see was the twisted dog’s body and the blood on his hands. He remembered his aunt, a psychologist, telling him how sociopaths got started--killing animals. While he doubted he was, well, was that, he was overly emotional if anything, it made him uneasy and it brought back bad memories.
He barely noticed when Blaze sat down beside him, barely noticed the scuffle of Booker’s feet and him sniffing in an oddly familiar way. He pictured him pushing his glasses back up his nose. Jacksin blinked his eyes open, unsure of when he closed them, and looked over at Blaze. Blaze was giving him an uneasy smile. His eyes were bright, though, not judgmental or hateful. Jacksin relaxed.
“Hey,” he murmured.
“Hey yourself,” Blaze said easily. He shifted closer on the back of the ambulance, turning his torso so he could look Jacksin in the eye, even if Jacksin wasn’t too up for that. “You okay?”
“ ‘m fine,” Jacksin said, shrugging a shoulder. His shirt, blood-sprayed, shifted awkwardly on his chest. “I want to get a shower, though.”
Blaze barked a laugh. “I can imagine.” He looked over his shirt. “That’s gross.”
“Thank you for your lovely commentary on the obvious,” Jacksin mumbled. His eyelids drooped and he yawned. “ ‘m tired, too.”
Blaze patted his shoulder blade. “You’ll be fine. They’re taking you to the hospital, right? For the shots?”
“Yeah,” Jacksin said. “They said there will be, like, three of them or something.”
“Ouch. In the arm, hopefully?”
“Yeah, probably. Where else--”
Blaze merely blinked at him.
“Ouch.” Jacksin was more concerned about the aches and pains, in his joints or whatever, that were said to be expected.
“Uh huh,” Blaze agreed, swinging a leg. Jacksin noticed Blaze’s dark-colored pants were stained with chalky gold-red dirt. His attention was dragged away when Shelly walked back, all bright and perky and almost nervous like before.
“Okay, boys,” she said, giving them a small, white-tooth smile, “one of you can ride with Jacksin here if you want, or you can come to the hospital in your truck and see him. He’ll probably be allowed visitors, unless his guardians disallow it.”
Blaze looked thoughtful for a second, but then he seemed to snap out of it just as quickly, out of whatever dreamworld he’d fallen into once again chasing his rabbits. “I can drive my truck,” he said, a bit more gravel than normal in his voice.
“I can ride with Jacksin if he wants,” Booker said, in a small voice. Jacksin noticed him looking awkward, pale eyes unusually large and his shirt stained with sweat. He kept looking between Jacksin and Blaze like they might disappear in a puff of smoke.
“You can come,” Jacksin said.
Blaze gave him a sort of funny look, then clambered off the back of the ambulance. “Jacksin will tell you my number,” he told Shelly. Jacksin blinked. He had a small moment of remembrance about how his father seemed fond of ordering him around, then squashed it. Blaze was just scared. He got bossy when he was freaked out. “Call me once you know the room number.” With that, Blaze pulled at his collar and then walked off, heading for his own truck.
Shelly looked mildly stunned, but she quickly got over herself, a taller, stronger guy named Jeff, if Jacksin remembered right.
“Come on buddy,” she said, “we gotta take these kids to the hospital. You get in touch with his folks yet?”
Jacksin wanted to correct her, remind her they were calling his aunt and uncle, but he decided against it, stayed silent. He watched Jeff, or whoever, shake his head negatively quickly, like he was sure Jacksin wouldn’t want to see.
It wasn’t like he didn’t already know Sampson was flighty and forgetful about, you know, turning on his cell phone, and Gianna tended to talk to her girls on days like this one.
Jacksin just wished somebody would pick up. He felt sort of lost right now, anyway.
He glanced over at Booker, who still looked shell-shocked, and nudged his thigh with his sneaker.
“Dude,” Jacksin said, and that was enough to snap Booker out of it.
“What?” Booker asked, looking concerned.
“Nothing,” he said. “You don’t look so good.”
“The screams were bad,” Booker said softly, folding his hands together, fingers interlaced.
“Oh” was all Jacksin could get out.
“You yelled, too, once--all loud. I thought Blaze had died,” Booker said.
Jacksin tilted his head. I screamed? He had bigger fish to fry, though. “Why would you think that?” The thought of either of his best friends--plus any other family, people close to him--dying was enough to chill his blood.
What were we thinking, getting in that pit?
“You made a sound like I’d never heard you make before,” Booker admitted. “It sounded--sad.”
Jacksin nodded slightly, an agreeable sound coming from his throat. Jeff climbed into the ambulance behind him and he knew it was about time to go.
“Sad?”
“Yeah,” Booker said. “I thought it was either that, or you were about to pass out from pain.”
Jacksin managed a humorless laugh at that. “Come on, Books. Get in the fancy flashy van--we’re going for a drive.”
“Does the van have candy?”
Jacksin took way too long to figure that one out and when he did, he used his good arm and socked Booker in the arm.
“What was that for?”
“You shouldn’t know things like that. I continue to require you to be the sane, innocent one of the group.”
“You’re sane--and pretty innocent.”
“How would you know?”
“Debra Hawthorne said hand-holding freaked you out.”
“Yeah, when the hands are in my lap.”
Booker about giggled. Nerd. “Virgin,” Booker said, as if reading his mind--again.
“Far-sighted nitwit,” Jacksin said easily, then yawned again. He dragged his limbs all into the back of the ambulance and then felt Shelly’s hand on his arm.
He didn’t quite catch Booker’s next remark as she tried to situate them, Jeff talking to Shelly from the front.
***
On the ride to the hospital, Jacksin didn’t have much to do. Booker kept quiet, looking strained, and tapped his foot, not exactly in tempo. Jacksin was forced to take time to notice little things--a gross-looking patch of something grayish on the side of the ambulance, Booker’s pair of yellowed, filthy untied shoelaces, one of the tiny plastic things hitting the floor with a tap-tap-tap, and the sound of breathing.
He began to feel bad for people who died in ambulances. Dying in an ambulance would be a pretty bland, horrific way to go, even if you did have someone special or whatever with you. You couldn’t see the sky or anything of the world except for human-made medical equipment and painted metal walls; maybe a few paramedics in scrubs and, again, a ride-along person.
Jacksin took the time to catalog Booker’s features, note the glasses that sent dark shadows down on his cheeks, the tenseness to his now thin-as-a-line mouth, the otherness of his eyes. Booker wasn’t here.
“You look worse off than me,” Jacksin said, rasping.
He wished somebody around here had some water. Fighting with Booker rolling around in dust and then going after a foursome of dogs made a guy thirsty. Why did no one ever think of things like that?
He blamed movies. Guys just looked, like, oiled or whatever after a fight in them. Perfectly fine and with enough stamina to also get the girl and have her. And, of course, they rarely had girls break a sweat on screen.
It was like humanity squicked them out or something.
Booker shrugged. “I’m fine.”
“You going to be scarred for life or something?”
“No,” Booker said. He sighed. “I’m just trying to get over the fact Blaze suddenly ran at me from behind those firs and told me to get somewhere where I had a cell signal because your wrist was bleeding. I thought--I thought you’d, you know, bleed out and that, you know, you might be all alone doing it, if Blaze wasn’t fast, and--it might be my fault.” Booker cut off there.
Jacksin didn’t try to make him speak again, he just laid back like a good patient and stared up at the dull gray ceiling.
He wondered if they ever got Sampson on the line.
Even as he thought that, he started scratching at his arm, just above the bandages, an absentminded gesture.
***
Jacksin had watched the flashing lights of the ambulance as he was lead out, put in a wheel chair despite his arguments--they claimed he’d lost too much blood, it was procedure, etc., and he was now in a tiny room, in a bed. They’d decided to keep him over night, for reasons he didn’t understand, really, other than the fact Sampson still hadn’t picked up.
He sort of felt like a kitten in a box at the side of the road about now.
Otherwise, one of the nurses, an older black woman, had let Blaze and Booker in. He wasn’t sure whether or not that was allowed.
Booker had fallen asleep in one of the mauve-and-green printed-fabric chairs, one of those things that only existed in hospitals, and his arms splayed on the faux-wood arms and legs so far out he was almost horizontal. His hair was messy and Jacksin knew Booker had to be exhausted. Hadn’t he stayed up late studying the night before? Jacksin couldn’t remember.
Otherwise, he knew he’d soon be one man down. Booker’s parents had picked up and his neurotic mom was coming to get him.
Jacksin wondered, too, if this would be the beginning of the end. Booker’s mother didn’t really like him to begin with, called him a rich boy hooligan, and she might not be very happy, even if Booker had been far away and hadn’t even gotten a scratch on him.
Jacksin yawned and settled back against the fluffy pillows and yanked the scratchy hospital blankets up a bit higher, the dry cold air getting at his bones. He looked from the purple and gold skyline outside to Blaze, who was focused on some rather violent show playing on the television, maybe something off Animal Planet.
As if Blaze had mother’s eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head, he then said, stiffly, “Stop scratching your arm.”
Jacksin jumped, and then narrowed his eyes at Blaze. “There’s no way you could’ve been able to tell whether or not I was just scratching my arm or not. My arms are under the sheets.”
“I can tell. Also, you’re still doing it.”
Jacksin sighed and stopped rubbing his fingertips against the soft skin of his inner arm. “It itches.”
“Then get a frickin’ cream for it, or something, jeez,” Blaze muttered, “don’t hurt yourself any worse.”
Jacksin frowned. “I didn’t hurt myself, Blaze.”
Blaze winced. “I know, I know. You know what I meant.”
Jacksin huffed. “Be careful saying stuff like that. That’s why you always make girls cry.”
“Naw, that’s just my devastatingly good looks at play. It makes their soft hearts melt, hence the crying.”
Jacksin paused. “I don’t think that made any sense.”
“I don’t have to make sense.”
“Whatever, Mr. Ego,” Jacksin mumbled, eyes going to the television screen. It was blurred yellows and blacks and he blinked. The image cleared to show a family of cheetahs.
He still remembered wanting one as a pet growing up. He wasn’t sure the exact reason for it, other than his father had splurged and taken him on a day to the zoo and a mother cat had two fluffy, grayish-furred kittens sitting with her behind the fence and hedge that day.
Maybe it had to do with the fact his father had actually talked to him that day. It made the memories seem fonder.
Blaze then spoke up. “Speaking of egos, that dude we stopped from being kibble? He has no ID.”
Jacksin felt dumb, but had to ask. “What does that have to do with egos?”
“Id and ego--really nothing, it was sort of a pun,” Blaze said.
Jacksin raised an eyebrow. “Still no clue what you’re talking about.”
“Shut up. Anyway, like, he had no information on him and he hasn’t spoken English so far, just, like, Russian or something.”
“Cyrillic?” Jacksin suggested.
“Eh, maybe,” Blaze said. He squinted. “Isn’t that still Russian?”
“They speak it there, yeah.”
Blaze nodded then his eyes went back to the television screen. A leopard was eating a gazelle in clear view.
“That’s nasty,” Jacksin mumbled.
Blaze hummed. “Yeah.”
Jacksin gathered his thoughts. “So, what, we thinking we rescued the life of an illegal alien?”
“Probably.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Yeah, he won’t pay us loads for saving his life,” Blaze said, a certain amount of sarcasm in his voice.
He had a point, though. It wasn’t like they’d get much more than a thanks if it had been anyone else--and their karma was a bit better, probably.
A life was a life.
“Jacksin?” Blaze’s voice was softer this time.
“Yeah?”
“You should look at the guy once you’re able,” Blaze said. “I don’t want to scare you, but he doesn’t look right.”
“What do you mean?”
Blaze looked at the lump in the blankets that was Jacksin’s injured arm. “We both have open wounds.”
“So?”
“He was bleeding.”
Jacksin had a small moment of panic when his brain connected the ideas, but he then recollected himself. “Dude, that’s, like, astronomical.”
Blaze hummed again, but this time he didn’t stay on tune.
