As she took a step towards the bookshelf that was in his room, she knew exactly where she would find what she was looking for. When she got to the shelf she grabbed Jackson’s favorite thing in the world. As she held it there in Jackson’s room she felt a presence so strong, she felt a tear roll down her cheek. This time the tear was not a completely sad tear. She felt like it was all going to be okay. Things just seemed so hopeless to her lately. Her parents wouldn’t leave her alone and she really did not want to talk to anyone about what she was feeling. Wiping the tear away, all she knew was that she felt more hopeful right this moment, than she had in the last few years. It is really hard to be positive when you watch your best friend and brother in so much pain.
Katie composed herself and walked out of Jackson’s room. With one more look of the room, she closed the door, hoping no one would notice that she had been in there.
Chapter 14
Walking back down the hall to her room, Katie quickly laid the item in the drawer of her night stand. She didn’t want anyone to know that she had taken it out of Jackson’s room.
She went back downstairs, and went to the kitchen. She emptied out the dishwasher and loaded the few dishes that were in the sink into it. She wasn’t sure what her parents wanted for dinner, but she knew that if the kitchen was clean that was in her favor.
As she started to wipe the counters down, the doorbell rang. She finished the counter quickly and threw out the wet paper towel. She grabbed the basket and went to the front door. As she opened the door, she couldn’t help but stare at Jack. He had on a pair of jeans, and a blue t-shirt. He looked so good that she was almost embarrassed that she was staring.
If Jack noticed her staring he didn’t show it. He looked at Katie and asked, “Are you ready?”
“I will be in just a minute,” Katie replied as she grabbed her hoodie off the banister, and walked back to the door.
As she came out, Jack grabbed the picnic basket out of her hand. Katie closed the front door after locking it. As they started down the walk, Katie realized that there was a car parked in front of her house that she had not seen before. She looked around to see if there was someone new on her street that the car could have belonged to.
When she didn’t see anyone she looked at Jack, seeing the smile on his face she knew that the car belonged to him. It was a pale blue and white 1955 Chevy. It was probably the shiniest car she had ever seen. This car didn’t have one flaw in it. That was something she had never seen in a car before. Her parents had always taken care of their family cars, but this car was unlike anything she had ever seen before.
Jack smiled as he saw the shock on her face. This car was the one thing that was left from his life as a kid. This was the car that he and his dad had built together when he was younger. His dad had this car when he was right out of high school. It was not in the best condition and the paint was looking horrible. When Jack was about ten years old he and his dad started restoring it. There was more time than Jack could remember when he and his dad were in the garage tinkering around. His mom would come in and say it was dinner time, and his dad would look at her and say, “We will be there in a few minutes,” but the food would be cold before they got to the table. His mom would be so frustrated that she started saying she didn’t know why she even bothered making them a hot meal when all they did was eat it cold. It eventually became an ongoing family joke.
“So you like the car I take it?” Jack said with a smile.
“This is your car?”
“Yep.”
“Wow, I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen this car around town.” Katie said as she ran the tip of her finger on the side of the car. She knew not to touch it but she honestly couldn’t help it. It was the most beautiful car she had ever seen.
“My dad and I redid this car when I was a kid. We would spend hours in the garage, often so many that it would annoy my mom. There were lots of nights that we were up well into the early morning. It was some of the best times of my childhood,” he said as he opened the door for her.
As Katie climbed in she said, “Thank you.”
Jack handed her the picnic basket and closed the door. He ran around to the other side and got in. As he started the car he couldn’t help but think how pretty Katie looked today. Putting the car in gear he pulled onto the road.
“So where are we going?” Katie asked, still amazed at the car itself. If her parents caught her in a car like this with a boy she would be grounded until she was dead.
“You will have to just wait and see.”
“You haven’t been here very long so it cannot really be someplace that I haven’t already been.”
“Oh so you think that I haven’t found my own places here in this town? I was pretty much invisible until I got arrested. No one seemed to notice that I even existed. So during that time I decided to explore and I found a great place.”
“Well we have to see if you have managed to find a spot that I have not found yet.”
“Yes we will,” he replied with a knowing smile.
They drove through town and into the country. They went about ten minutes down the road and turned right. They went about a half a mile down the road, when Jack pulled off the side of the road. Katie looked at him with a questioning look.
“This is the place you picked to go?”
“What is so wrong with this place?” he asked.
Looking around she responded “there is nothing here.”
“Yes there is. Right over there is a tree and leading up to that is a field of flowers,” he replied as he got out of the car with a smile on his face.
Katie waited for him to come around to her side of the car. She wasn’t going to be getting out of the car at all.
He opened the door and Katie just sat there without moving. “Well are you getting out or are you just going to sit there while I have a picnic all by my lonesome?” he asked her with a smile on his face.
“There is nothing here. I am not going to sit in weeds to have a picnic. I cannot believe this is where you picked to have a picnic.”
“I come here when I want to think. Just come with me. You will like it here I promise. Besides you will not be on the weeds, I brought a blanket,” Jack replied with a grin.
Reluctantly Katie got out of the car and stood there looking around. She could not believe he talked her into coming here to a place where there is absolutely nothing. “Well nothing besides a tree and some flowers,” she thought to herself.
Jack grabbed a blanket out of the trunk of the car as Katie stood there looking around. As he started walking into the field Katie followed. When they got to the tree, Jack spread out the blanket. Katie put the picnic basket on the blanket and sat down, still not sure why he brought her out here.
Jack sat down next to her, and smiled. “It is absolutely beautiful here and it is so peaceful. I told you I would take you somewhere you have never been before.”
“What makes you think I have never been here before?”
“Oh I don’t know, maybe it was that look on your face as we pulled up that gave it away,” he replied with a smirk on his face.
“Well your wrong.”
“Oh so you have been out here before?”
Not able to look at him Katie said, “Yes….Okay, no I have not been up here, but why would anyone want to come here. It is just a field and nothing else.”
“For me that is all I need to think.”
“You come here to think?” she asked him. As she began to take things out of the basket she asked him, “What do you think about?”
“A little bit of everything. Usually just about life, and when I am having a bad day I come here and it almost makes things easier to deal with,” he replied.
After pulling everything out of the basket Katie grabbed the bread and handed two pieces to Jack.
“Two pieces of bread, that’s all I get for lunch? Remind me never to bring you anywhere without telling you where again,” he replied with a sarcastic
tone.
Trying hard to stifle a laugh Katie replied, “Yeah well you don’t pick the best places at all to have a picnic.”
“Oh really? Like you would have picked a better place?”
“As a matter of fact I would have,” Katie said as she handed him the bowl with the condiments.
Opening up the container, Jack started smiling. “I’m not sure that you have ever been on a picnic before,” he said holding up the bread in one hand and the condiments in the other.
Laughing Katie shook her head and replied, “I did not know what you liked on your sandwiches so I decided to put everything on the side. This way I was safe with not making something you wouldn’t eat.”
“If there is a picnic offered, and I do not have to make the food, then I will eat anything put in front of me. As long as there are not any sardines,” he said with a scrunched up face.
“Well I will keep that in mind next time,” she said as she handed him the knife so that he could put mayo and mustard on his sandwich.
Katie started fixing her sandwich. She too applied mayo and mustard to her sandwich. After adding the lettuce and tomato, she took the knife and cut it into four triangles.
Jack started laughing as he watched her cut her sandwich. Katie knew what he was laughing at and ignored him. Instead she opened the basket to pull out the thermoses that were inside. She handed the Spiderman thermos to Jack.
Jack laughed as he took it from her. He opened it and took a drink without looking at what was in it. He was pleasantly surprised when he found that there was milk in it.
They ate their lunch in silence just looking at absolutely nothing. Katie wanted to ask Jack a question, but she did not want to come off as nosey. She just knew that she didn’t know a lot about him.
As she sat and thought about how to ask him without pushing too much, Jack could see that she was thinking about something. While he wasn’t positive exactly what it was, he knew there was a chance that he was going to have to explain what he came out here to think about.
Catching Katie a little off guard Jack started talking about his childhood. He told her about how he grew up in the suburbs of Denver. He talked about the house and his friends, and his school. As he talked she could hear the sadness in his voice. It was like he was talking about something he lost many years ago, not something he lost just this last year.
Katie listened intently and nodded when appropriate. When Jack stopped talking Katie said, “It sounds like you miss your old home.”
“I do, but it was not always happy times there. I lost someone very close to me and it has caused a lot of stress on my life in the last year.”
She figured he was talking about a friend or even a girlfriend. She wasn’t going to pry she told herself. Before she could say anything Jack lay back on his elbows, with his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked out into the distance and started telling Katie the story that changed his life.
“About a year ago, my parents went out on their weekly date night. I was at home, watching television, plotting out how I was going to get my parents to let me go on the trip to Mexico that my friends were planning for the summer. I was watching the news, but at the same time I was falling asleep. I guess I fell asleep for a little while, and a knock at the door woke me up. I went to answer the door, and when I opened it up, my Aunt was standing there.” With his eyes watering, and a look of sadness on his face, Jack continued. “My Aunt Ashley came in and looked like she had been crying. I told her my mom and dad had gone out on their date night and should be back soon. She came in and sat down on the couch. I sat down in the chair and looked at the clock. It was two o’clock in the morning. I had fallen asleep a lot longer than I thought. That’s when my aunt told me that she had gotten a phone call from the police. She said “Your parents have been in a really bad car accident. Your dad is fine, just a few scrapes and bruises, but your mom is in critical condition.” All I could do was look at her like it was all a bad dream.”
Katie watched him and she suddenly felt the need to hold his hand. She reached over and as she touched his hand he took hers intertwining their fingers together. She could see that he was reliving something that he didn’t really want to, but seemed to need to talk about it.
“When she told me that I was so mad and told her she was lying, and that they would be home in a few minutes. I didn’t want to believe her at all. She told me we could go to the hospital and see them, but she wanted to warn me first, that my mom was in bad condition. I just sat there looking at her. Everything she was saying just seemed like a bad dream. We went to the hospital and when I saw my mom laying there in the hospital bed with all the tubes coming out of her body, I just completely lost it. I cried so long that I didn’t have any tears left. I thought I had lost my mom. After a few days she improved and the doctors told my dad who never left my mom’s side, she would be ok, but she would be paralyzed from her neck down for the rest of her life. That meant she would be in a wheel chair and a complete life change for all of us.”
Katie couldn’t speak because she really didn’t know how to respond. She knew how she felt with all that happened with Jackson, but she could never fathom having to deal with what Jack had been through. She watched him as he looked up at the clouds passing by, trying hard not to cry. She couldn’t help but feel helpless because she didn’t know how to make the pain that she was seeing on his face go away.
Without really meaning too Katie squeezed Jacks’ hand and leaned in close to lay her head on his shoulder. Jack didn’t seem to mind it, in fact he moved in just a little closer to her. They sat quietly looking off into the distance for a long time.
Katie’s neck started to get a kink in it, so she sat up reluctantly. She was enjoying just sitting there with Jack. She had not been this comfortable with anyone before. As she sat up, she felt Jack tighten his grip on her hand. He obviously was not ready to let go just yet. Katie wasn’t ready yet either, and with a small grin on her face squeezed his hand back.
Chapter 15
After sitting in silence for another half hour, Katie knew she needed to get home soon. She didn’t want to give her parents anymore reason to try to make a big deal out of nothing. Katie looked over at Jack, and could see him still staring off into space. She could tell that he was thinking about his life before the accident with his mom. She wished she could take away the pain that was clearly visible on his face.
Forcing herself to let go of his hand, she stood up and stretched her legs. She had sat for so long that her legs were cramped. She raised her hands above her head and without meaning too made a rather loud stretching sound. As she did this she noticed Jack seeming to snap back to the here and now.
Walking over to him and squatting in front of him she said quietly, “Are you okay?”
“I will be fine,” he said like he always did when anyone asked him how he was doing, and didn’t really want to talk about it.
“I am so sorry that you have had to deal with something like that. I have a hard enough time dealing with the loss of Jackson, that I could not ever imagine how I would deal with having someone I love there, but at the same time not really there. That would be absolutely horrible,” Katie said as she stood up. She didn’t want him to see that she was doing all that she could not to wrap her arms around him and hold him close. She would give anything to take away the pain. She had never felt the urge that she does right now with anyone else.
“It isn’t your fault that it happened. You were not even in the same state when it all happened.’
“I know that. It just doesn’t seem fair that you have to deal with something like that. Why did your family move out here?”
“My dad thought that it would be good for me and my mom to be close to her family. He figured that would mean that there would be more people to help us take care of my mom. Boy was he ever wrong on that front.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well since we have lived here we have only seen one of my
mom’s sisters and no one else seems to be interested in coming to see her. Basically we see them just as much; actually maybe a little less than what we saw them when we lived in Denver.”
Katie felt so bad for him. No one should ever have to deal with something like this. She knew that if she had to deal with having someone so close to her in the same state that Jack’s mom is, she would be much worse than she was right now. At this moment, having lost Jackson is way better than having to watch him suffer everyday of his life.
“Okay, enough of the sadness, we were supposed to be having a happy day, that you would never forget,” Jack said as he started to put things back in the basket.
“Today was a day I will never forget, no matter how sad you think it was. I would never have thought that you had gone through such a terrible time. You do not walk around sad all the time and you seem like nothing like that had ever happened. How is that possible?”
“Honestly, it is because I talked to someone. It wasn’t until I started talking to the therapist that I started getting back to normal.”
Katie couldn’t believe that something like talking to someone who really didn’t know a single thing about your problems would solve anything. She wasn’t about to talk to anyone who hadn’t ever lost their brother about how she felt, but she wasn’t about to make Jack seem like he was wrong for talking to anyone. “I am glad that talking to someone else helped you with all of the pain that you were going through. I just don’t think I really need to talk to anyone at this point. Just like I told my parents last night, I will talk to someone when I am ready,” she responded in the most polite way she knew how.
“I wasn’t trying to push you to talk to anyone. I was just…. I don’t really know what I was trying to do actually. I haven’t talk to anyone about my mom except the counselor and I don’t know why I actually told you about it,” he said as he picked up the last of the picnic stuff and looked around to make sure that there wasn’t any garbage left behind.
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