The Understorey, Book One of The Leaving Series (40 page)

I hopped in my truck not even bothering to
see if I matched at all. The ride to Charleston was deafeningly
quiet and allowed so many sad thoughts to seep into my mind.

I thought about every single kiss I’d ever
given Jules. I knew them by heart because that’s exactly what they
were, tiny slivers of my heart given to her.

I was starting to feel overwhelmingly sad
when I noticed something white on my floorboard. It was Jules’
handkerchief, neatly folded and pressed, her tiny embroidered
initials in light green. She ironed her handkerchiefs like a little
old lady, which made me laugh and almost cry at the same time. I
picked it up and held it in my hand. Her perfume wafted into my
nose. It smelled just like Jules.
It must have fallen out of her
pocket last night
o
r maybe she did it on purpose. She is
clever like that.
I could just imagine her own thought process,
if she
had
done it on purpose. I’d have to tease her about
it when I called her later. I laughed out loud to no one. If there
had been anyone else on the highway they would have pegged me a
lunatic, laughing uncontrollably as I was with a handkerchief
plastered to my nose.    

I needed to focus on the task at hand but it
was becoming increasingly hard for me to think straight. I was
starting to feel like a drunk, stumbling around. Jules had replaced
my center of gravity with herself. I even tripped on a rock I’d
known had been next to my driveway since I was a baby. I felt like
I was no longer symmetrical, completely off balance.

I walked into the massive electronic store in
Charleston and thoughtfully walked the aisles looking for anything
I’d think would help me catch them.

Something caught my eye but it was over a
thousand dollars and that just wasn’t feasible, it’s not that I
wouldn’t have spent it, it’s just I didn’t have it and that felt
horrible. I settled for three night cameras, two I planned on
positioning in the trees outside Jules’ window, one pointing
outside the shrubbery they seemed to always come out from, I was
hoping to catch them putting on their masks in side those bushes
and the other pointing directly at the window they favored. Another
I planned on actually hiding inside her room.

The cameras were of an ingenious nature. I
could hook all three to one hub and digitally record the video
through the software that came with the cameras on to the laptop I
planned on keeping hidden in their living room. Nobody knew Jules
had left town. As far as her neighbors were concerned the only
people seen leaving Jules’ home the past few days were her visiting
relatives. It worked out really well that way since I was hoping
Jesse and Taylor would continue with their nightly visits.

“Lunatics”, I shuddered.

Through clever questioning while ‘shooting
the breeze’ with Mr. Williams, Taylor’s dad, Danny found out that
Taylor had a hidden GPS tracking device in her car so he could keep
track of his out of control daughter.

That was a lucky break. Danny said that he
hoped they used Taylor’s car for everything so they could subpoena
the information to use as evidence. Danny was starting to warm up
to the idea that it was Jesse and Taylor who might be responsible
though he wasn’t singling them out and still considering all other
possibilities. It was only a matter of time until he saw
exactly
what I did.

With my purchases in hand, I began my drive
straight for Jules’ house. I didn’t want to waste any time. Before
I arrived though, came the lonely hour and a half car ride home and
again the sense of sadness overwhelmed me. I was determined to get
this separation over with. It had only been a couple of hours that
I’d been separated from Jules but it was already taking a serious
toll on me. I felt weak, drained. I didn’t want to find out what
several days of an untouchable Jules meant. I’d be the walking
dead.

Jules’ house was empty but her dad told me he
left a key at the neighbor’s house. That was awkward. Mrs.
Stevenson looked at me strangely and I didn’t really feel like
offering an explanation as she held the key a bit too long,
obviously waiting for me to explain myself. I took the key, said
thank you and walked over to the Jacobs’ house. I went to my truck
and got the bags of my snooping loot.

Using Mr. Jacobs’ ladder, I scaled the trees
and directed the cameras toward the most ideal spots. I stapled the
cords to the part of the tree that would be invisible at the angle
Jesse and Taylor intrude from and ran them along the hidden parts
of the grass through Jules’ back door.

I hoped for two things just then. I wished
that it would snow soon and cover up all of my tracks and the
cameras’ cords and I also wished that Mrs. Stevenson would keep her
mouth closed to everyone about what I was doing because I could see
her nosey ass peeking through the window at me.

It would be the most massive waste of time if
she even told
one
person in Bramwell because that would mean
it’d eventually be front page news and Jesse would shy away like a
mouse in the walls. Well, I hoped for three things really. The
third, bringing Jules home, tonight if possible. I’d go get her
myself.

I strung the cords to the cameras through the
living room and sprawled them onto the wood floor. I grabbed the
third camera and walked into Jules’ room. The look of it knocked me
breathless. Everything about it screamed Jules to me. Her bed was a
patchwork of dark, rich fabrics, velvets, silks and satins, even a
bit of antiqued lace. The bed frame was an antique as well, the
headboard and the end board were a dark teal tufted silk framed
with light green curved wood. Her wing back was in her reading
corner. I remembered helping her recover the old fabric it was in
with a loud colorful one. I told her it looked ridiculous but she
said, “Trust me Elliott,” and when we set it in her corner she was
right. She was always right.

She had this really interesting wool crewel
rug of a giant crustacean between the bed and her bookcase next to
the chair in her reading corner. Above the chair she hung the horn
of an old gramophone she had turned into a lamp herself and along
the windows she hung floor to ceiling paneled cream curtains with
teal embroidery she said she got online from a store in Morocco. I
called them her own personal taste of the ‘Marrakesh Express’.
 

The wall opposite the window held her dark
red vanity table. This was where I wanted to set the camera. I
could hide it easily behind the large heavy mirror. It would be
easy to miss it because Jules’ room was wallpapered in a busy
damask and the entire wall with the vanity and the door was
peppered with gilded frames and monochromatic art. It also faced
the window.

I ran the cord along her baseboard and out
into the hallway continuing to the living room. I had begun
downloading the software that came with the cameras an hour before
and it was done.

I hooked up the cords to the hub that had a
usb attached and started the program. I pressed record and it
instantly began to take in the images. I could see all three
cameras simultaneously. I adjusted two of the cameras as needed and
when I felt satisfied with everything I left their home knowing I
had done everything I could have done, for their house that is. I
should have felt happy about it all but I didn’t. In fact, I felt
ill. I couldn’t believe all this was happening to us.

When most teenagers were out goofing around
on their Christmas Break, going to the mall, or driving to friends’
houses I was setting up my own private surveillance system to catch
my psychotic ex-best friend and Taylor the pathetic stalker in the
act of harassing my girlfriend, to get to me.

That was the hardest part to swallow. I knew
why these things were happening. Me. What killed me the most is
that I had no idea how to make it stop. It seemed as if there
was
no stopping it, I couldn’t even offer up myself. Jesse
was the cruelest kind of monster. He didn’t want me to die, leave,
perish. He wanted me to suffer. He wanted to take away everything
that was dear to me and I knew that if I didn’t catch him soon that
he wouldn’t stop at Jules. He would move on to my family as well.
He had doled out every kind of punishment the insane could hand out
and up until now I had pretty much taken it lying down. I would no
longer do this. I decided that he needed a taste of his own
medicine and from what I heard Judge Henderson liked to double the
dosage.

That evening I called Jules and we chatted it
up for close to two hours. At dinner my mom stared at me in
disbelief.

“What could you possibly talk about for two
hours? You guys spend every waking minute together. What’s left to
say?”

“Mom, we entertain each other. It’s the most
peculiar thing. She’s so much fun to laugh with.”

“I find that mighty sweet son but two hours
is too long, I’m sorry. What if your grandma or Danny had called?
We don’t have call waiting darlin’.”

“Okay, mom. I’ll shorten it up, promise.”

“Good deal baby,” she said ruffling my hair.
“Your hair really is getting long.”

“Yeah, I’m thinkin’ about getting it cut
soon, maybe before Jules comes home.”

“Why?”

“Because if she were here, she wouldn’t let
me cut it.”

Only my mom and I laughed. Maddy and dad were
immersed in their own conversation about how to properly construct
a homemade kite. Sheesh, they were such nerds.

    “You might want to keep it
as long as possible since you’ll need it short when you’re in the
fields for hygienic purposes. You know, sort of live it up.”
    “You’re too practical mom,” I said, shaking my
head. “No, I really want it cut, it makes me feel younger than what
I really am. I’ve felt I’ve aged so much these past few weeks what
with Jules being harassed and all.”
    “Oh Elliott, my poor boy. You’ve been given
challenges no one should carry, but I’ve noticed you do carry on
and well, as if you were made of stuff greater than all other men.
Yours is the most resilient soul I’ve ever met.”
    “Oh no, mom. I am barely hanging on by a thread,
the slightest wind and my thread might break.”
    “You may feel as much but I assure you that
thread might as well be a steel cable for all the strength that is
in your heart. No, you are much stronger than you think.”
    “Thanks mom,” I said standing up. I smiled at
her and she took my hand in hers and squeezed it, reassuring me of
all the things she felt.

I couldn’t wait to go to sleep, for several
reasons. First, because I was tired of the ache in my stomach,
chest and heart from missing Jules so intensely and second, because
I was more than anxious to wake early and check the video for signs
of the idiots. I was surprised at how well Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs kept
their cool during this entire thing. If it were my kid, well, let’s
just say I’d feel sorry for the maniac. I suppose I couldn’t blame
them, they were doing everything possible to catch Jesse and keep
Jules safe.

I climbed into bed, my muscles felt sore and
used like I’d just run flat out for miles, but I knew it was only
the yearning I felt for Jules. My tired body drifted off to sleep
easily thinking of her and just as easily I shifted to dreaming
about her, about the happiest times on our rock bridge.

The rock bridge, especially during the
winter, was one of the most beautiful pieces of nature I’d ever
laid eyes on. Even if I traveled God’s entire earth I would never
see a hundred pieces together as beautiful as our marble slab,
because it was
our
piece of earth, our own heavenly fixed
mark. It was a place of firsts and I wanted it to be the place
where Jules would first agree to marry me with no stipulations and
I hoped it would be the place where we said I do.

The next morning, I woke with my feet hanging
from the edge of my bed. Being six foot four had its drawbacks
sometimes. I slumped onto my back, feet touching the cold wood
floor and stared at my ceiling.
December twenty-eighth
, I
said to myself. I needed to get a move on if I wanted to get Jules
back by New Year’s Eve. I jumped up and hopped into the shower. I
let the hot water cascade down my back and held myself up by
placing both of my hands on the tiled wall in front of me below the
shower head. I almost drifted back to sleep when my mom woke me by
knocking on the door.

“Jules is on the phone. Do you want me to
tell her you’ll call her back,” she screamed.

“No!” I shouted. I quickly turned off the
water and wrapped a towel around my waist. I ran to the phone
dripping water all the way. I was freezing cold, the farmhouse
never got warm enough.

“Hello?” I panted.

“Elliott? How are you babe?”

“Uh, wet,” I laughed.

“What?” I could just see the furrowing of her
eyebrows. “Why?”

“Because I was in the middle of my
shower.”

She laughed uncontrollably.
    “Why didn’t you just call me back later?” She
asked, as if it should have been obvious to me.
    “No way. I’m feeling sick without you and I
wanted to hear your voice,” I said standing in a massive puddle of
water, my wet hair dripping down my neck and shoulders.
    “Finish your shower sweets. Call me when you’re
done.”
    “Okay, I guess this short conversation will tide
me over until I’m done.”
    “Bye Elliott.”
    “Bye babe.”

I slipped and slid all over the kitchen floor
and ran back to the bathroom to finish my shower. When I was done I
sprinted to my room and tried to dress as quickly as possible. I
needed to talk to Jules but I also needed to get warm again. I had
showered so fast I didn’t have time to get warm from the water. I
even put my coat on before picking up the receiver again.

How many times is she gonna’ let it
ring?
I asked myself. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not a very
patient person. Her aunt picked it up. Jules wasn’t there, she said
she’d be right back that she just ran to the store with one of her
cousins. I told her I’d call her back later that morning.