Shelter Me (3 page)

George was getting on in years, but I didn't let myself think about that. He was strong and healthy like he'd always been - just a little more hesitant to jump up on high shelves. I told myself he was just getting more cautious with age.

Someone was tapping at my door.
 

"Yeah?" I called out, and it swung open slowly.

"Hey," said Martha, smiling tentatively. Her smiles, when aimed at me, always seemed tentative. She walked in, perching gingerly on the edge of my computer chair. "So, what do you think of the new guy?"

"Who, Mark?" I knew who she was talking about, but for some reason I felt the need to ask.

"Yeah. I noticed you guys were talking."

"He was talking to me," I corrected her, swinging my legs down to the floor and sitting up. George sprawled out, kneading at my leg with his paws. "Sheesh. Ow," I scolded him as his claws dug in.

"He seems nice." Martha was still smiling a little. I couldn't figure out what she was driving at, but I knew there had to be something.

"Sure," I said.

Martha's smile was becoming more strained. "Give him a chance, Mari."

"I'm going to," I said, irritated. What on earth was her problem? It wasn't like I'd scared off the last guy, although he left so quickly when he was offered a paying job at another church that you'd
think
something spooked him.

"Okay," she said, quietly. "Mom said to let you know dinner's almost ready."

I waited to get up until she left the room. I'd never exactly been close to my sisters, but ever since Martha went off to college, the rift between us had become blindingly obvious. We could hardly even have a conversation. Having her home for the summer ought to have been a relief - something for my parents to focus on, besides me - but it just made things worse.

For a while, I just stood there beside my bed, absently petting George and thinking of nothing at all.
 

I actually had forgotten about dinner until I heard my mother's voice echo up the stairs.

"MARI! DINNER!"

Coming back to the present, I shook my head and walked towards the door. I didn't even have my hand on the knob yet before I heard her start thundering up the stairs.

"MARI! FOR PETE'S SAKE -"

I pushed my door open just as she was reaching the top of the stairs. "I'm coming," I muttered, as she whirled around and stomped back down the stairs.

"I don't know why you have to make everything so difficult," she said, more to herself than to me.

As it happened, I didn't know either. But I just kept that to myself.
 

CHAPTER THREE

Jacob

"Remember to take Molly out every couple hours, especially if you're going out. But try not to go out. Don't stay out for a long time.
No bike rides
."

On the floor, at my feet, Molly's tail thumped on the floor at the sound of her name.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. "
Mom
," I said, my tone finishing the sentence for me.

"I want to be able to get in touch with you," she said, firmly.

I waved my cell phone in her general direction.

"Half the places you ride don't have service. I'm sure I don't have to remind you about the time -"

"Yeah, yeah, okay." I swiveled around in my chair. "No bike rides. Got it, warden."

She smacked me lightly on the back of the head. "You're going to break your leg someday."

I rolled my eyes and went back to my chat. Brandon was keeping me updated on the painful process of finishing a college essay. He'd elected to take a year off, giving him plenty of time to find just the right school. In theory, at least.

Brandon:
they want me to talk about a time when I was excluded because i'm different

Brandon:
help me jacob-wan

Brandon:
you're my only hope

I smirked.

Me:
i think they might be fishing for something a little more meaningful than "clearly I am smarter than everybody and I often feel left out because of that, here are several examples"

Me:
so I got nothing for you, sorry buddy

He lost no time in responding.

Brandon:
thx man deeply appreciate your help as always

My mom was kissing me on the top of the head. "Who's that you're talking to?"

"Brandon," I said.
 

She made a little face. "All right, well. Don't waste too much time on that instant messenger. Make sure to eat something reasonable for dinner. Okay? If I see something on your Facebook about having nothing but yogurt pops and canned chili, I'll come back here and rap your knuckles."

"Okay, sure, mom."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

"Are you guys coming?" came my sister's voice, faintly, from out in the car.

"Be right out, honey. Sorry!"

My parents finally managed to get themselves out the door, and I cracked my knuckles before going back to my conversation with Brandon.

Me:
so apparently i'm not allowed to ride bikes while they're gone

Me:
no word yet on whether i can have play dates or my blankie

Brandon:
well to be fair you pretty much get yourself lost on a mountain every time you get on that bike

Me:
that happened like one time

Brandon:
yeah one time, six times, what's the difference

Me:
shut up

Me:
brb getting something to eat

I wasn't really planning on having yogurt pops for dinner, but since she mentioned it, I couldn't get the idea out of my head. She pretty much only bought them for my sister Sara, but everyone once in a while I got a craving for nostalgia snack food.

Walking back from the fridge with a yogurt pop dangling from my mouth, I considered the bike ride ban. I was sure I could go out without any issues, so long as I didn't stay out of our cell service area for too long. Not returning a call or text for about half an hour could be explained away easily, but much longer than that and she'd get suspicious.

Following her ordinance simply wasn't an option. I needed to ride my bike like I needed to breathe. Especially at time like this, with Sara going into the hospital again, I desperately needed something to take my mind off of everything.

Not that it was any big deal. Not this time. It wasn't like that one bitterly cold January morning when we'd rushed her in after she fell and hit her head on the coffee table. And it wasn't nearly as bad as the time she almost bit clean through her tongue. But she'd started having seizures in her sleep again, and they wanted to study her overnight to see if they could come up with a more effective treatment plan.

The seizures would wake her up and make it hard to go back to sleep, which in turn made it a lot more likely for her to have violent and unpredictable fits during the day. No medication could keep them at bay if she was sleep-deprived, and these days, she had bags under her eyes more often than not.
 

For Sara, nothing could ever be easy. That was just the hand she'd been dealt.
 

***

I was flying.

Hurtling down the side of a mountain, anyway, which was as close as I was going to get in this life. To call it a religious experience would be blasphemy, but just between the two of us, I'll admit that I felt closer to God on my bike than I ever did in church. The pure exhilaration erased everything from my mind. When I rode my bike, I didn't think about Marissa or my sister or the fact that I had no idea what I was doing with my life. It was a blissful escape.
 

I'd made sure to take Molly for a long walk and fill her food and water dishes first, and I even called my mom and left a voicemail to check in. Hopefully, that hadn't made her even more suspicious. Brandon used to sarcastically refer to cell phones as "an electronic leash," and at times, he was painfully correct.

But now, for the moment, I was free.
 

I felt my phone start buzzing in my pocket. Coasting to a stop as best I could, I stumbled a little on the dismount, scrambling for my phone before I missed the call. Sure enough, it was from mom.

"Hi, honey. Just returning your call. How's everything going?"

"Great. How's Sara?"

"Well, you know. She's not happy, but that little Nintendo thing you got her is definitely making it easier."

I grinned. The latest and greatest DS had been an obvious choice for her birthday, but I had to save my chore money for ages to make it happen. She actually squealed when she opened it. I'll never forget the way her face lit up.
 

"Good," I said. "That's exactly what I was hoping."

"Wait, wait, okay. Don't distract me. I was calling to check up on
you
. What are you up to?"

"Nothing much." Right on time, a bird on a nearby branch let out a high-pitched warble.

"Are you outside? It sounds like you're outside."

"Oh, yeah, I'm just out in the yard with Molly."

"Okay," she said, slowly. I could tell she was skeptical, but she stopped short of asking the neighbors to spy on me. She paused, taking a deep breath. "Jacob, you - you know I'm just worried about you, right?"

"Yeah. Of course." I chewed on my lower lip.

There was a long silence.

"Okay," she said, finally. "I'll let you go. Don't stay up all night."

"No promises."

"Love you."

"Love you too, night mom."

"Goodnight, Jacob."

Dusk was settling in. I needed to get home before the trail got too dark to see. I hopped back on my bike and started pedaling until I gained my momentum back, and continued coasting down the side of the mountain until I felt pavement under my wheels.

Wherever I was, there were no street lights. I pedaled cautiously along the side of the narrow road, keeping my ears perked for the sound of approaching cars. I knew I couldn't be far from home, but I didn't recognize this particular stretch.
 

Glancing up at the sky, I saw it had grown dim and grey, and bats flitted across the expanse, little dark shapes, zig zagging like drunken birds.

I was starting to feel that little tickle of nervousness, but I pushed it aside and kept pedaling. I'd gotten "lost" plenty of times before, and I'd only ever actually been
lost
once or twice.

After a few more minutes, I pulled off by the ditch and looked around me. I still couldn't recognize a thing, and it was getting darker. It felt like admitting defeat, but I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

Last Christmas, my parents had managed to spring for newer phones that actually had GPS built in. They were as basic as it came, but as my mom said meaningfully, it was "better than nothing." I hadn't ever used it, but I figured now was the time. I pulled up the map and waited for it to find me.

And waited. And waited.

ERROR: NO CONNECTION FOUND

Seriously?

I threw the phone back in my pocket and started pedaling furiously down the road again.
 

In all my years of riding around these back roads, it seemed impossible that I could have somehow stumbled across a stretch I didn't know. It must be the dark, or I just wasn't used to seeing it from this direction. At any rate, it was definitely going to connect with something I recognized, at some point. It had to, right?
 

I shook my head to clear the unpleasant worries, and kept on pedaling.

By now, it was completely dark. For once I was grateful for the little reflectors my mom had insisted I paste all over my bike; the noise of the crickets had grown so loud that I wasn't sure I would even hear a car coming.
 

As I kept on riding, my mind started to wander. Almost anything was better than thinking about my current predicament, and before I knew it, I blinked and I saw Marissa's face.

This was what I did, whenever I was bored or distracted or lonely or afraid. I remembered her face - her smile - which came so rarely, and was all the more important because of that. I remembered her voice, always so soft and unassuming. But she was stronger than anyone knew. It was hiding in her eyes. I didn't know anybody else who could walk through a crowd of people that she knew were all whispering rumors about her, her back straight and her hands clasped in front of her, grace personified.

I knew that she knew. She'd even joked about it once or twice. "You know the kinds of things people say about me." I tried to imagine being in her shoes and joking about being the pariah. I was pretty sure that if I were her, I would have stopped going to church by now. Maybe run away from home. The silent judgment would be more than I could take.

But there she was, every day, sitting next to her family with her hands in her lap and her eyes on the pulpit. In my less charitable moments, I hated them - all of them, every last person at Eternal Grace that seemed to so hell-bent on keeping her an outcast. It was an impulse I'd never understand. But it didn't seem like it was ever going to change.

If Marissa were here right now, riding next to me on her hand-me-down roadster in sea foam green, she'd just smile encouragingly at me. "Don't worry. Any minute now, we'll come up on a road you recognize."

I shook my head, bringing myself back to reality. Up ahead was the glow of a street light, and there was a sign underneath it.
 

I'd hit the state route that ran almost directly through my back yard.

Marissa would laugh.

***

When Brandon first told me about Mark and Marissa, I thought he was kidding. It would have been the perfect way to mess with me. But not even the unplumbed depths of his mind could come up with something like that.

"You know," he said, around a mouthful of sandwich, "Mark asked Mr. Moore if he could court Marissa."

I almost spit out my soda.

"You're kidding." I felt like I'd been punched in the chest, which I told myself was just shock. Mark and...Marissa? I mean, he wasn't technically that much older than the rest of us, but the maturity gap seemed obscenely big. He owned a house, for crying out loud. Mari was still living in the bedroom she grew up in, with pink wallpaper and a Beatrix Potter lamp.