3
Yeah, that'd been a fun day. And now I had to deal with his annoying little cousin while he went off and did gosh knows what. I had high hopes growing up that he would make a frog-to-prince transition. Result: disappointment. All he did was lose baby fat, and as sad as I was that I poked him and met some degree of resistance instead of a squishy squishiness, it wasn't much of a change, and it was our tenth year knowing each other.
"Jacoby!" I yelled when I got into the clearing where our families were sitting.
I'm going to kick his scrawny bum when I find him, I thought with a grim smile, but at the same time, wondering if I had the guts to keep that promise. He was harder to push around these days, just like I was, hopefully.
His mother, Doreen Harold, glanced up from her conversation with my parents. Her face crinkled into a smile as she saw me, holding hands so nicely with her niece, when really, I felt like I was being gently mauled by a grizzly bear cub.
"Mrs. Harold, do you know where Jacoby is?" I asked, trying to dislodge my hand from Emma.
"Oh, Jake? He wandered off into the woods a few minutes ago after Emma said she wanted to visit you."
"Oh, okay. Thanks."
I didn't know why everyone insisted on calling Jacoby, Jake. Even his parents did. He might've preferred to be called that instead of Jacoby, since, well, it was a weird name, but to me, he was always Jacoby, never Jake. I had gone through great lengths to learn his name when I was younger and it stuck. Being the dork I was, I used to mutter his name to make sure I wouldn't forget how to say it.
I finally freed myself from Emma's grasp and stood there, wondering what to do now. Emma was here in the clearing again under supervision. Maybe if I left really quietly she wouldn't notice.
"Where ya goin', Jasslyn?" Her squeaky voice was like a whistle to the ear.
No. I'm not going to kick his bum...I'm going to throttle him and shove his face into the dirt until it's permanently brown. That's what he's going to get for leaving his little cousin with me.
"I'm going back to the field. I left my charcoal there," I said to her.
"I'm gonna go with you!"
I sighed and bent down to grab her. She squirmed and kicked as I lifted her up under her arms, like my mother used to do to me.
"Hey!" she yelled.
"Emma, I think you should go wash your hands. Your fingers are very dirty and sticky from the chocolate and jam you've been eating," I said, making sure Mrs. Harold heard me. She perked up at the word 'dirty' and glanced over at Emma.
"Ems, sweetie, come here. Let's see how filthy you've gotten already." Mrs. Harold gestured for Emma to come closer, and she obeyed, albeit grumpily.
I took off gleefully for my spot in the woods. Maybe I could try to sketch the scene again. Or maybe I could find a pretty flower to draw.
When I finally arrived at my spot I skidded to a stop. Sitting cross-legged next to my sketchpad and charcoal tin was Jacoby.
"Lovely of you to leave your little cousin with me," I snapped, though the urge to do mean things to him began to dissipate with every second I stood in his presence. He had a gaze that was capable of turning any extreme emotion into something as ridiculous as a child's tantrum-meaning, degrading, and as hard as I tried not to let it affect me, it did.
Nonetheless, my sudden appearance had startled him, and started, falling backwards but catching himself with a braced hand. He pushed himself to his feet.
He looked the same as always. Dark auburn hair. A nose. A mouth. He looked as ordinary as anyone else. What set him apart were his blue eyes, looking just as patronizing as they had been when I first met him.
"She wanted to find you, I didn't," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
Whenever I saw him he either looked tired or impatient. A tired or impatient prince, as I liked to call him. It was the way he held himself, and the way he acted around everyone that made him seem that way. Mind you, the younger me always thought he exuded a certain, oh, maybe pure evil feeling. I could never stick around for a very long time when he was in the picture.
"...I thought you were responsible enough to keep an eye on her for a bit."
Were you still talking?
Yet another reason why I didn't like being around him: He always thought I was stupid. From day one, he had picked up on my lack of focus immediately. Exploited it, even, so he could sneer at me whenever my eyes glazed over. He took no offence like my other friends did when I stopped paying attention. He actually enjoyed it when I zoned out, probably because it gave him that much more to tease me about.
It took a few seconds for me to haul my thoughts back to the present.
"Doesn't mean you can just dump her with me," I spluttered. "She ruined my drawing," I added as an after-thought, walking over to stand next to him. The top of my head barely reached his chin.
Wish we were kids again, I thought wistfully, remembering the days where I could trip him and prank him and pass it off as a complete accident. Shove him into a bush where I knew a dog had just peed in. Flush the toilet when I knew he was showering. Shake his can of soda when he wasn't looking. The classics. And my favourite: replace the filling in his Oreos with toothepaste. I was thankful of my periodical bursts of boldness; I was sure I would have exploded if I hadn't gotten my fair share of pranks.
Jacoby snorted. "I thought that line looked out of place." He squatted down again and took my drawing in both hands. "Looks pretty accurate though, except for this part right here." He pointed to a small clump of flowers off to the side of my drawing, growing on a heap of dirt.
I frowned. "What's wrong with those?" I asked.
"They look too stiff to be real. Flowers are alive. They move, they grow, don't they?"
I allowed myself the smallest of glances down to his feet. Forget-me-nots were pushing themselves out from the soil and growing in super-speed. Literally. One second they weren't there, and another second, they were. And if that was not odd enough, they waved their tiny periwinkle petals in greeting, though there was no wind and neither Jacoby nor I had moved. It was like they were alive, little pets that followed Jacoby around...except there was something clearly magical about them, 'cause, y'know, they were flowers. Yup. Something definitely, without a doubt, magical.
He placed the drawing on the ground and started digging around a seedling-what flower it would turn into I wasn't sure. Holding it out in cupped hands, he inclined his head. I squatted uncertainly next to him.
"What?"
"Hold your hands out," he said, like nothing was more obvious.
I did, and he dumped everything into my hands. I wrinkled my nose and held it farther away from me. It was dry and chalky, dropping from my hands in messy, uneven clumps.
"See how the dirt has texture? It's not all black all white. Same goes for the flowers." He reached down again and picked up my drawing. After a couple seconds of thought, he smudged the flowers with his thumb.
"Hey!" I exclaimed, not caring when I threw the plant away, whatever it was. The dirt scattered onto the beaten path. I ripped my page from his hands. "Just 'cause I made a mark on it doesn't mean the drawing's completely ruined," I said. I held the paper up to my eyes and stared at the flowers.
"Sorry," he said in a monotone voice. He looked down at his hands, fingers curled as if he were still holding my drawing. "You didn't have to give me a paper cut." Raising his hand, he rubbed the spot between his index finger and thumb against his shirt, deemed it clean enough, and sucked on it.
There was a small bang. I couldn't help myself. I tensed. A firework had just gone off behind him, a tiny little rocket that swirled a couple times by his ear before fizzling out.
"What's up with you?" Jacoby asked absent-mindedly, still nursing his cut.
"Nothing." When his head started turning towards me I added hurriedly, "I thought I heard Emma's voice." It was a lie. I hadn't heard Emma's voice, not even close to it.
For some reason I couldn't explain, flowers and balloons and fireworks were with him wherever he went. When I was little, I would think to myself, Wow, Jacoby's gotta have big pockets to hold all those fireworks and balloons. I even went through a period of time thinking that he was a magician. I was close to telling him so when I felt nice sometimes, but then he would look at me with that demeaning expression of his, and I would close my mouth and keep it to myself. Why would I want to point out something as ludicrous as that when he already looked at me with eyes that spelled, "I hope for the sake of mankind you have counselling sessions"? Even now, I refused to talk to him about it on the pretence of asking whether or not he knew how to carry out magic tricks; the fireworks and balloons appeared naturally and he looked so unfazed with his expression of impassiveness that it was impossible for him to be doing magic. I remember thinking about asking his mother. But every time I brought Jacoby's...abilities into the conversation (when my mother wasn't around, of course, because she thought I was just being rude when I pointed out odd things about Jacoby, and disapproved), Mrs.Harold merely laughed and told me what a vivid imagination I had. After hearing that same line for more than thirty times in my childhood, I learned to keep quiet. It did not explain the mystery of Jacoby's random flowers and fireworks, though.
Jacoby laughed once and the suspicious moment passed. "Scares you that much?"
I grunted. "I like my peace and quiet."
"So do I," he said under his breath.
I was about to ask him how he managed to get his peace and quiet with the ruckus around him when I remembered I wasn't supposed to point any of that out.
"What?" My open mouth had not gone unnoticed by Jacoby.
I gazed down at my charcoal drawing, thinking quickly about what to say. My eyes fell upon the cluster of flowers. "You know, as much as I hate to admit it, the flowers actually look better than before." I raised my head a bit to look at Jacoby and found that he was holding my gaze.
He was smiling in a different way. It wasn't his usual 'Oh, how I pity you' smile, but a genuine one, small as it was. He seemed to brighten a bit, or looked more awake, at least.
I smiled back at him, but instead of encouraging our friendly conversation, it seemed to stifle it. His glow fizzled out, and the merry upturned corners of his mouth flattened. He twisted away and fixed his eyes upon the space between his shoes.
"And you go and give me a paper cut as a thank you," he said quickly, as if something bad would happen if he cut his snarkiness for five seconds.
Couldn't bear to stay nice, could you?
"Stop being such a baby," I muttered, not wanting to treat him nicely while he treated me so rudely.
"You don't think paper cuts hurt?" he asked, spreading his two fingers apart for me to see, and bringing his hand within an inch of my face. My face scrunched up and I wrinkled my nose.
"Get that ugly thing out of my face," I said. "A paper cut isn't much compared to other stuff," I added, thinking about all the unhappy and frustrated days he'd caused whenever we were clumped together. He'd gone past what I could accept as just a joke on several occasions. We teased each other, but had an unspoken rule of leaving insecurities out of our antics. He broke that rule sometimes, and I was too stubborn to admit to him that it actually hurt.
He was silent then, and we stood around, muffled in an awkward moment. If only Emma was around to break the silence.
"I think I'll head back now." Jacoby turned swiftly on his heel and was ducking under the branches that extended out above the trail before I could blink my eyes twice.
I huffed. He can be as moody as he wants, I thought. You'd think I killed his dog for all the kindness he's treating me with.
I stared down at my drawing and felt an urge to shred it to pieces. The more I stared at the flowers Jacoby had smudged, the angrier I got.
"How can you look at me like I'm worthless?" I shouted to the dirt at my feet. I noticed that the forget-me-nots were now gone, no doubt unable to stay when Jacoby had left. I kicked at the spot where a tiny mound of dirt had been unearthed by the unnatural little flowers. "You look at me like I'm some kind of circus fool but who's the one that's messed up?" My hand was tightening around the drawing and I heard the tell-tale crinkling of paper. Everything that had happened within the last two minutes was making me furious. When I looked down at my shoe and found it covered in dirt I nearly lost it. "Jacoby I'm- too-good-to-even-bother-with-you Harold, don't you dare look at me like I'm a piece of-"
"Excuse me, little girl?"
I whirled around to face the source of the voice. A woman in her sixties was standing on the trail that wound deeper into the forest. It looked like she had just arrived at the small clearing I was standing in, no doubt having heard my screaming.
"Yes?" I said irritably.
"Are you quite all right?" she asked. Her greying hair was tied into a bun at the back of her head, a few wispy strands lingering on either side of her face. She wore a weathered army green jacket with several pockets and khaki trousers. Her sturdy hiking boots crunched on the fallen twigs as she stepped closer to me.
I eyed her wearily. "I'm fine. Just...a little angry."
The woman raised her eyebrows and gave a small nod. "May I ask who you were yelling at?" she asked politely.
I felt that it was none of her business to ask something like that. But I really didn't want to seem even ruder after my angry outburst. I sighed and relaxed the hand that had up to now been clenching my drawing. "I was just angry at a...at a friend," I replied abruptly.
"Are you feeling a little better now?"
"Yes. I'm sorry, but...why are you even asking?"
"Well, dearie, anyone who shouts at someone that isn't there in the middle of the forest has got to be a little upset, don't you think?" she said kindly. Her grandmotherly words softened my tense posture.
"Well, thank you for your concern. I'm much better now, actually," I said with a small laugh. "I just really needed to get that off my chest."
The woman nodded. "It is better to let off some steam once in a while."
Right as I thought insert awkward silence where I sneak away, a large grey dog came bounding down the trail towards us. I tensed again as I watched it come to a stop next to the woman. Even she seemed surprised to see the canine by her side.
"Is that your um, dog?" I asked nervously. It did not look like a dog. More like a wolf. The pointed ears, the unnatural grey and tawny fur. Sure, it could have passed as a husky...but I had a sinking feeling huskies didn't come in this colour.
"Why yes, it is," the woman said happily, reaching down to stroke the fur on the top of its head. "Traz, say hello to...?"
"Jasslyn. My name is Jasslyn." I could not help but be nervous around this wild looking dog. It sat quietly by the woman's side, but I was scared it would slice me to ribbons with those claws if the lady encouraged it to shake hands with me.
"I am Fiona. Say hello, Traz." Fiona nudged the dog-wolf with her knee and he rose onto his feet and padded forward a step.
"Um, I'm not really a wuh-dog person," I stuttered, trying not to back away as the canine approached.
"Oh, no need to worry. Alcatraz is a very friendly dog, aren't you?" she said, leaning forward and giving his haunches a pat.
"Isn't Alcatraz the name of that famous jailhouse?" I asked anxiously. The dog had stopped approaching, but it now sat in front of me, ears perked like he would take a chunk out of my leg if I moved.
"Yes it is. But I named him that because he really is such a good guard dog." Fiona watched my edgy expression and gave her knee two quick slaps in succession. Alcatraz turned from me without a second glance and went to sit next to his owner. "I can sleep safe and sound at night without a single worry of robbers or thieves crossing my mind," she said cheerfully.
"That's...that's good. Well, I really should be heading back to my family right now," I said, bending down to pick up my tin of charcoal. "Have a great day!" I squeaked. I gave a hasty nod to Fiona and Alcatraz and scurried off. I turned my head to glance at the two of them and saw them heading back into the forest the way they came.
I did not slow down until I was certain I had put enough distance between the woman and her dog. My breathing was speeding up as panic started to creep over me. I tried to unscramble my thoughts.
Our family had a dog before. I really loved him. And of course I was sad when he passed away, but that was not the source of my distress. I reached further back into my memory. I slowed my run to a walk and placed a hand on a crooked tree looming over the path to steady myself.
I groaned when I felt a wave of dizziness crash over and around me, and crouched down and hung my head between my knees.
My thoughts swirled like the contents of a cauldron, bits and pieces floating around that refused to make sense. It was only shortly after I met Jacoby that strange things started happening to me. I felt my finger of blame gravitating towards Jacoby, ready to accuse him of causing all the peculiar events that had kept me up at night and scared me all those years ago.
Panic rolled over me in waves and I stopped trying to contemplate the confusing thoughts of anger and unrighteousness.
Breathe in, breathe out. In, out, I told myself. Gradually, my pulse went from thundering to thrumming, and I was able to get a grip on my thoughts again. It felt like a slow tide washing me towards the source of my previous panic.
I let the sluggish waves push me closer. The memory I was looking for popped to the surface like a message in a bottle. As it unravelled, I tentatively straightened, though my hand still rested on the rough, scratchy bark of the tree.
It had happened the summer before third grade.
The relieving sense of realization washed over me and I began to walk again. As I walked closer, I could hear the voices of my mother and Jacoby's parents, and Emma's screeching. I was glad I was returning to the picnic site. It meant that things were going back to normal. That once I broke through the shade of the forest and snagged myself a plate of chips and dip, everything would go back to the way it was.