Those piercing steely gray eyes haunt me the rest of the day, I can’t get the look Jason gave me out of my head. The gnawing sensation in my gut continues as well. In seventh period English, which is usually my favorite class. During volleyball practice after school when I should be focusing. In my Jeep on the way home. Even lying in my bed face up staring at the ceiling. I see his eyes and the utter despondency in them when I did nothing to stop Bryce. And worse, I piled on the shit.
I feel like such a bitch. I should have stood up for him, I should have defended him against Bryce and told him off for being a bully. But then I wouldn’t have a prom date.
And…I’d be a social pariah just as much as him. I’m almost done with high school, done with this fucking backwater town. Maybe in my next life, far from here, I’ll be a better person. Maybe then, I can be the person I want to be. Until then, I’m going to live out the rest of the school year as comfortably as I can, which means not drawing attention to myself before graduation. After that, I never have to think about this place again.
Or Jason.
I don’t like being that person. I wish I’d taken a different path in school. I wish I’d made different friends or something. But I’m stuck in this cycle of trying to be accepted and regretting my actions every time. I’m trying to make it to the finish line unscathed.
I just didn’t think I’d have to step on others to get there.
Chapter Two
Jason-Present
Something in the Orange-Zach Bryan
She’s barely dressed for a calm winter day let alone the fucking storm blowing down on us, right now. Jeans, a thermal shirt and a Sherpa coat over the top. Thankfully, she is wearing some heavy snow boots so at least her feet are warm. But based on how cold she was when I pulled her out of the car, she must have been out here for a little while before I found her.
Which brings me back to the main question: why the hell is she out here in this storm? Everyone knows this time of year the snow gets too heavy for traveling up the mountain. And everyone especially knows to be careful on the bridge crossing the river on the way up. Too many cars have slipped off the road and plummeted to their death if they don’t know how to drive in this kind of weather. Mara has lived here most of her life, she should know all of this.
I curl her up beside me so her head rests on my shoulder as I drive back to the cabin. Knowing today would be the first major snowfall that would lock us onto our land for the next few months, I wouldn’t have been able to get home if I’d lingered much longer at the hunting spot. There’s no way Mara’s car would have made it up the mountain, either. Where the hell was she going?
And more importantly, what the hell am I going to do with her? If I takeher back to town now I’ll be stuck down there leaving Dylan stranded and alone. So I’m taking her back to the cabin but there’s no way I’ll be able to get back down the mountain for a few months, not until the snow melts a bit. If previous years are any indication, we’ll be stuck at the cabin until March.
It takes about twenty minutes, but I finally make it back to the cabin as the snowfall picks up, even the wind is howling now. I cradle Mara into my arms and head inside, stomping up the steps to alert Dylan that I’m home before barging in with an unconscious, bloodied woman in my arms.
The warmth of the kitchen is a stark relief to the bitter cold outside.Bitter, that’s what the name Mara means in Hebrew. I like knowing things. I like the hidden meaning behind names. I don’t remember when I looked it up, but I found the meaning of her name once. Kind of fitting, really. The rest of the world saw bubbly, outgoing preppy Mara. I saw the bitter, cold, hateful side of her.
Dylan stands at the stove getting something ready for dinner, smells like the savory spice of chili if I had to guess. When he hears the door open, he starts talking without looking around. “Bout time you got back, the storm is getting crazy. I thought you’d freeze your ass off out—.” His sentence trails off when he looks over his shoulder to find me standing in the kitchen, covered in crusted snow, holding an unconscious body in my arms.
“What the actual fuck,” he says in disbelief, taking the chili off the stove and setting it on a hot pad, ignoring the meal to focus his attention on the problem at hand. “Who the hell…? Is that Mara Meyers? What the hell is going on?”
Without answering, I stride into the living room and use my hip to push the sofa closer to the roaring fire in the stone fireplace that takes up a third of the wall. I lay Mara out on it to warm her up before locating the first aid kit in the downstairs bathroom. She may hate me for it when she wakes up—if she wakes up—but I decide to undress her down to her undergarments to check for other injuries. It looks like her face and arms took the brunt of the force as if she was shielding herself on impact. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t sustain other injuries.
Without asking him to, Dylan brings me a damp rag so I can start wiping away the blood on her skin. With the dried brown-red blood gone, I can see where she has actual injuries versus blood that seeped down her skin.
“What the fuck happened, Jason?“ my brother asks me. His voice is harsh but worried, not accusatory. I pause to quickly signcar crashwith my hands before resuming my work. I don’t sign often, I don’t communicate at all, really, but I’m sure he’s going crazy not knowing.
I did some intense first aid research when we decided to live at the cabin full time after graduating. No cell service, no internet, and no way up or down the mountain this time of year. So I knew one of us had to figure this shit out in case of an emergency like this. The only thing is, I didn’t expect to use those skills on someone else.
My mind jumps directly into fixer mode, combing through everything I’ve learned at break-neck speed as I work. I don’t like taking classes or having someone stand in front of me with a PowerPoint. So I learned through reading, YouTube, and online articles. I could probably perform surgery if I had the right resources to teach me.
It appears that most of the injuries are on Mara’s face and arms, as I suspected, a few cuts and bruises but nothing that will need stitches. There’s a dark bruise on her pelvis where the seatbelt kept her from flying through the windshield. That’s going to hurt in the morning and take the longest to heal. But as I feel her hip bones, it doesn’t feel like anything is broken, same with her arms. I wrap her right arm in gauze which has the most bleeding, and put a bandage over the cut on her cheek. I hope it doesn’t scar. Or maybe I do, she was always so vane in high school, maybe this will be a good lesson in humility.
But it’s then that I notice her hair isn’t the bright blonde it was in high school, her nails are natural, no paint or any of that fake stuff. She’s a little curvier, too, she was always stick-straight in high school. I think I prefer her like this, a little meat on her bones suits her feisty personality better than the scrawny girl I once knew.
I don’t even think she’s wearing makeup. I don’t think I saw her step out in public without makeup the entire time I knew her in school. But, thenagain, I haven’t seen her in two years. A lot can change in that time.
I’m a perfect example.
After the treatment she and her friends gave me in high school, I decided I needed to be able to defend myself if I was going to continue my bout of silence. I have no intention of talking any time soon. So I started lifting weights, training my body, and even taught myself kickboxing. Occasionally, Dylan will spar with me so I can get some practice with something besides a punching bag.
One thing is for sure, no one is going to push me around and humiliate me ever again. The days of being the weak mute kid are gone.
“She’s freezing, man,” Dylan points out. The problem is, her clothes are still freezing too. I lay them out on the ground by the fire to warm them up before wrapping Mara in a blanket that was hanging off the back of the couch. I tuck her in like a burrito before stripping off my wet outer layers and nestle in behind her on the couch, encompassing her in my warmth. She needs to retain body heat. Honestly, putting her in a hot shower would probably be quicker, but that risks waking her up with the jolt of water. As funny as it might be to watch her flail about in any other scenario, I don’t think she can take much more tonight.
I still don’t know how she ended up on the mountain to begin with.
