CHAPTER NINE
Thia
It was another lifetime ago when I was last in Jessep. At least that’s how it seemed, although in reality it hadn’t been very long at all.
Yet the stench of rotting oranges was more pungent than I remembered, so strong that Rage covered her mouth too just as we passed the WELCOME TO JESSEP sign. If possible, the dirt roads had gotten even harder to navigate, as evidenced by the truck bouncing from side to side as I tried—and failed—to dodge crater-like potholes and large rocks.
Home.
Is that still what this place was?
It didn’t feel that way.
We passed the small cross on the side of the road marking where Kevin Little rolled his John Deer, trapping himself under the shallow water of a retention ditch. I never knew Kevin, but I knew his family. The cross had been there for as long as I could remember. Wilted wild flowers were piled up on the ground around it. Limp balloons tangled with each other, the strings were probably the only thing holding the warped wood upright.
That cross used to be the first sign that I was coming home. It was the first thing to give me that warm and fuzzy feeling of familiarity whenever I turned off the main road and onto the first dirt road that lead into Jessep.
Coming into town this time was different.
It seemed familiar, but it no longer felt like home.
I don’t know when that happened. Was it when my parents died and I skipped town? Was it before that and I just hadn’t noticed?
In Jessep, the children of farmers either became farmers themselves or married farmers. I’d known from very early on that it would fall on me to take over Andrews Grove. It was all I knew. It wasn’t that I liked the idea. I never really even thought about it as a like or dislike. It wasn’t a choice. It was just what was going to happen. There were no plans for my college education. The closest thing to college I would ever hope to get was a few nighttime business classes and certification courses held every few months in the cafeteria of the combined elementary/middle school.
But then my parents checked out, and I was running the grove before I could even sign up for the courses. I tried my best with the knowledge I knew from growing up in the grove to save it, but it all went to shit so fast, it was like I blinked and it was all over.
I’d failed.
* * *
“I don’t want to go in there,” I said, staring at the front porch.
“I had the power turned back on,” King said, misunderstanding my reasoning’s for not wanting to go into the little house of horrors of my past. Rage on the other hand skipped up the steps and kicked open the front door, disappearing inside.
“It smells in here,” she shouted, making a long and loud gagging noise.
“Is she really the one you guys wanted to watch out for me?” I asked King. “I mean, I know you said she blew up a building but are you sure she wasn’t just trying to deodorize the place or something? She seems to have a thing about smells.”
“Don’t let the pink fool you,” he said, his voice deep and hard. “That tiny psycho germaphobe in there is the deadliest fucking person, well, maybe second deadliest, I’ve ever known and it’s because she doesn’t take sides. She has no conscience. It’s good that we got to her before Chop did or you’d be meeting a whole other side to Rage. One that ends up with you not breathing.”
“Oh,” I muttered, not sure if I should be happy or sad about Bear choosing to leave me in the care of Rambo, prom queen edition. King strode up to the porch and shouted something to Rage who appeared again in the doorway, twirling the end of her ponytail.
“Ray or I will call to check on you,” King stated as he walked right past me and got back into the truck. Within seconds he’d already backed out of the driveway and disappeared down the road. I couldn’t see the truck but I could make out the dust billowing behind his truck and over the trees as King made his way out of Jessep.
I glanced up at Rage who pressed her lips together and frowned. I couldn’t help but wish I was still in that truck with him.
I shuffled up to the house but stopped just short of the broken down deteriorating steps.
“You shoot?” Rage asked, holding up one of my first place blue ribbons.
“Yeah. A bit.”
“Wanna have a little competition?” she asked with a mischievous smile, pulling two guns from her duffle bag.
Rage may be able to blow up buildings and if what King said was true, a lot more than that. But in a shooting competition I had a strong doubt that she could beat me and maybe a little distraction from reality was what I needed. After all, I had no idea how much time we had on our hands.
“Okay,” I said, pointing behind her. “There’s a fence on the back of the property. Might still be some of my old targets out there—”
“Nope. Not exactly what I had in mind,” Rage interrupted, checking her reflection in the chrome of one of her guns. She tossed me the other which I thankfully caught. “Come on,” she said, heading back up into the house.
“I can’t,” I said, twisting Bear’s ring in my hand.
Rage narrowed her eyes at me, “I figured that when I saw the look on your face when we first pulled up, but I have an idea. At least come up the steps.”
Reluctantly, I took the steps slowly, one by one, cringing with each familiar creak. I stopped “What bothers you most about this place?” Rage asked from the other side of the screen.
“Everything,” I admitted.
“Be more specific,” Rage said, letting out an exasperated sigh. “I already know that it holds some bad memories, yada yada, killed your parents here, yada yada.”
“Something tells me the last one wasn’t exactly a guess.”
Rage smiled sheepishly. “I know everything about everything.”
“Good to know.”
“So tell me what you hate about it. You know, besides the obvious, being-a-shit-hole, reason.”
“Well,” I started. “I hate that this is where my brother died, but I was young, so what I really hate is that my mother never changed his room or got rid of any of his stuff. It was like a ghost lived with us, one she liked better than me or my dad.”
“Keep going,” Rage said. “Close your eyes.” I did as she said and the images of all that was wrong with that place flooded my mind. I heard the squeak of the screen door open and started to open my eyes again. “Keep them shut,” she ordered.
I took a deep breath. “I hate the family portrait in the living room because my mom had it painted by one of her friends years after my brother died and instead of it being of the three of us my mom had my brother painted in. I loved my brother, and we had lots of pictures of him all around the house and I loved them all, but I felt like it was a slap in the face to me and my dad. We were alive, yet she treated us like we were the ones who were dead.”
“Good,” Rage said, tugging on my arm, making me take a step forward. “More.”
“I hate the rocking chair in my brother’s room where she was sitting when I realized she killed my dad. I hate that I know the exact place in my parents’ room where my father died. I hate the table in the kitchen where we had Sunday dinner and would all smile and talk about our days like there was nothing wrong. Those weren’t dinners. Those were lies.”
I felt another tug and took another step. “Okay, good. Now open your eyes.” I did.
“Wow,” I said. I was standing in the middle of the living room. “How did you do that?” I asked, noticing the panicked feeling was gone.
Rage replied with, “Because recently someone taught me how to overcome a fear, and I thought maybe I could pass that along to you.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Easy peasy,” Rage said. Turning suddenly she aimed her gun at the family portrait hanging above the mantle of the little fireplace in the living room and fired, shattering the glass, sending it raining down to the floor, leaving a dusty rectangular mark on the wall where it had hung. She turned back around. “You take the power back.”
It was like suddenly something inside of me broke and without thinking I took a step past Rage, walking around the broken portrait in the living room in complete and total awe. “Yes,” I said, looking back up to Rage. “Let’s do it.”
Rage and I spent the rest of the afternoon making a competition of setting up vases, photos, stuffed animals, plates, and other objects of my hatred, taking turns obliterating each and every one of them.
Neither one of us missed a single shot.
“Have you ever missed?” Rage asked from her perch on the counter, as she watched me sweep glass into a dust pan.
“Yes,” I admitted, remembering the park and how I almost got Bear and I killed because I hit Mono’s shoulder instead of his chest. “Once, maybe twice.”
Only when shooting at people.
“You?”
Rage swung her legs back and forth and scrunched up her little nose. “Just once, although I’m starting to think I did it on purpose.”
We were both quiet after that as I cleaned up the mess, and Rage cleaned her guns. She’d been right. In order to overcome my fear I had to take the power back, which meant I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing when it came to my fear of losing Bear.
I had to do something.
Unfortunately, in order to do something I had to wait for Barbarian Barbie to turn her back.
At least long enough for me to borrow one of her guns.
Which I realized very quickly was going to be hard when she didn’t leave my side. When I showered, she sat on the toilet with the lid down and filed her nails. When I cleaned out the freezer, she did a bizarre series of stretches in the middle of the kitchen. When I went outside to throw away the trash, she kept pace beside me and complained about the heat.
That first night when I went to sleep in my little twin bed in my old room, Rage surprised me by getting in right beside me. “What’s going to happen to this house?” she asked without a trace of tiredness in her voice.
“Bank will probably take it back soon.” I said, yawning.
“Good. That means we can blow it up when we leave,” she said, sitting up and hopping up and down on her butt and clapping like she’d just been crowned prom queen, which she most certainly could’ve been with her blonde hair and tanned skin. However, I had the nagging inkling that Rage’s past was more colorful then prom court and pep rallies.
“Deal,” I agreed, enjoying the idea of watching the place go up in an explosion of flames. “But do you really have to sleep in here? You can sleep in my brother’s old room. Or on the couch. It pulls out. The extra linens should be in the hall closet.” I didn’t mention anything about my parents’ room, preferring instead to pretend like the room where I’d found my father’s bloodied body didn’t exist.
Rage ignored me, her silence telling me all I needed to know about her plans for going to find another place to sleep.
“Is what King said true?” I asked. “You don’t sleep?”
“No, I don’t. Not really. Not for a long time, anyway,” she said, staring up at the ceiling.
“How do you survive?”
“I don’t really know,” she answered with an audible sigh, although she seemed like she was talking about more than just her lack of sleep.
“I have to help Bear,” I admitted. Testing the waters to see if there was any way I could get her to help me instead of hindering me.
“You can’t help him,” Rage said, taking me by surprise.
“Why the hell not?” I asked, turning on my side to face her. Rage did the same. Her blue eyes sparkled but were lacking something which I soon realized was what King had been talking about when he’d dropped us off.
“Because you can’t leave the house. Those are my orders.”
“But why?”
“All I know is that I’m here to make sure you don’t try anything stupid.”
“How are you going to stop me?” I asked, growing bold.
Rage giggled like a schoolgirl with a secret, she rolled onto her back, again turning her attentions to the ceiling. “That, Thia, is entirely up to you.”