The Apocalypse (24 page)

"Then in return," Hannah began, scowling, "I'm going to
mean
it when I say not to take my heys away from me because
hey
, you're a big jerk!"

Jake smirked. "I love taking hey from asses."

"Only because bigger asses need more hay," Hannah snapped back.

After blinking, Jake could only stare at Hannah in wonder, amazed by her quickness. So maybe he shouldn't have expected her wit to be gone, but hearing it certainly caught him off guard, particularly when he hadn't expected her to understand his play on words in the first place.

Seemingly oblivious to Jake's stare, Hannah yawned and lied back against the pillows on her bed. "I'm exhausted—thanks to you. It's impossible to sleep peacefully while sitting upright."

"Mm." Growing restless and more uncomfortable being on a bed with his enemy, Jake looked to Hannah's alarm clock and decided that he should probably get home. Isaac wouldn't wake up for at least another three hours, and he didn't want to be stuck with just Hannah. Clearly, being her helper-friend-thing was going to take some
major
adjusting. "I should go. You're tired, and my grandparents will bawl me out if I miss breakfast with them."

Hannah smiled sleepily. "True. You'll be back later, right?"

The question put Jake on the spot, and it gave him a funny feeling. That was the kind of question that a girlfriend would ask. True, a friend might ask it also, but the way Hannah was looking at him… If he didn't get out of there in a hurry, he'd either puke on her or end up killing himself from the horror of it all. It was definitely going to take seeing a dead dog to get the mental image of Hannah smiling at him like
that
out of his head. Ugh.

"You better," Hannah murmured on seemingly mindlessly, wiggling against her pillows and closing her eyes. "Might as well go through the Christmas torture together, eh?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess," Jake muttered as he picked up his box and made for the door in a hurry. Fortunately, the genuine sickness in his stomach was going to allow him to beg off of Christmas dinner with a legitimate illness, although he doubted his mother would let him off the hook anyway. It'd be worth a shot though.

"Are you sure that this tie matches my suit, Elizabeth?" Jonah Allen asked for the fifth time, peering into the bathroom mirror later on that Christmas Day. Since Jake's bedroom was directly across from the bathroom, he had the misfortune of hearing his grandparents talking, since both doors were open. "I feel as if I'm mismatched. Maybe I should wear my green tie instead of the red."

Elizabeth's fingers rolled through her tight perm. "You look fine, dear." She sashayed around her husband and started down the hall, calling over her shoulder, "Hurry and don't make us late."

Jake sighed so loudly that he missed his grandfather's response, though his grandma could have been talking to him. Lying across his bed, Jake had been listening to his iPod until his grandparents' fussing became louder than his music. Then he'd taken to texting a few of his friends, and now, as he waited for responses from Brent and Kirk, Jake had nothing to do.

"Are you wearing
that
to Christmas dinner?"

Slowly, Jake raised his green eyes to his grandpa's face in the doorway. Even slower, he looked down at his outfit—old blue jeans and a brown polo with white stripes. It seemed fine to him. "Yeah."

Jonah scowled angrily. "You shouldn't be such a slacker on Christmas, Jake. Is it so hard for you to dress up on occasion?"

Knowing that it would anger him further, Jake shrugged lazily and flipped his cell phone open, ready to even fake sending a text message. Dimly, he heard his grandfather lecturing about ignoring him, but Jake was fascinated by an incoming call—from Hannah. She'd never called him before. In fact, they only had each other's numbers in the first place because, back in their middle school days, they tended to prank call each other anonymously when they were with their friends.

"—and, furthermore, Jake, I don't appreciate it when—"

"I've kinda got to take this call," Jake interrupted as politely as he could, though his mouth was quirking with
a
dire need to smirk his classic smirk. "It's pretty important." Muttering angrily under his breath, Jonah surprisingly left, and Jake resisted the urge to throw his cell phone at Jonah's retreating back. Easily, he instead accepted the call from Hannah. "Hello?"

"Hey…" She sounded glum. "What are you doing?"

Brow furrowing, Jake sat up, listening cautiously. "Um, not much. Why?"

"Can we skip Christmas dinner?"

Surprised by Hannah's longing to skip
any
meal, let alone a big one like Christmas dinner, Jake's jaw dropped. "What? Why? Is that even allowed? There's got to be some law written somewhere that—"

"Shut up, you pansy, and meet me outside in five minutes. You're driving."

It took a few moments for Jake to realize that she'd hung up on him. Miffed, he considered ignoring her, but two thoughts came to him. One, Shirley wanted him to help Hannah get her memory back through friendship, and that also benefited him. And two, skipping Christmas dinner also meant skipping out on the grandparents, which
really
benefited him. So ultimately, it was not a hard decision to make, and Jake found himself sitting outside in his ice cold truck, cranking the heater on full blast, in less than three minutes.

God help him for obeying
the
Hannah Ayers.

As he sat there, Jake pondered Hannah's motives. There was a certain emotion in her voice that he didn't recognize, and it unnerved him. Obviously something had happened if she wanted to blow off dinner, but what could have been so bad that she'd want to give up turkey with all the trimmings?

The passenger side door opened then, and Hannah, bundled in a thick blue coat by The North Face, climbed into the seat. "Thank God you didn't put up a fight," she greeted, jerking her seat belt on. "Drive, please."

"Oh no." Faux-befriending Hannah was one thing. Letting her boss him around multiple times—especially in one day—was something different entirely. "Not until you give me an explanation for this."

Indignantly, Hannah tucked her hair behind her ear, haughtily proclaiming, "If you don't drive, I will. That's perfectly okay."

Jake glared at her, fondly imagining hitting her with something, preferably hard. Still, he put his truck into drive and backed out of his driveway. "I don't know why you have to be such a bitch," he griped. "I mean, I know it's in your nature and all, but jeez—"

"I'm starving. Therefore, I'm allowed to be bitchy." Hannah sighed and tipped her head, sending a wave of strawberry blonde hair flowing into the heater's reach. "Did you see that commercial last night? Walgreens is open on Christmas Day. Let's go there and binge on whatever they'll sell us."

"You'd think that if you were so hungry, you'd want to go to Christmas dinner."

"And you'd think that, since it's shocking that I don't, you'd understand that you should go to Walgreens faster."

Jake scowled. "Boss me around one more time and see what happens."

Instead of fighting with him, Hannah offered what almost looked like a sympathetic smile. "It's not like you want to go to a big family dinner anyway. So I'm kind of doing you a favor. Will you please drive faster?"

Since Jake couldn't respond to that with an argument, he didn't respond at all. Instead, he drove to their local Walgreens without saying a single word, despite that Hannah was muttering to herself about what she wanted to eat. He heard her name different brands of chips and candy, but Jake refused to give her the satisfaction of conversation. No, apparently, he'd be stuck with her for awhile, and the time for talking would undoubtedly come, so he figured he should save his patience for tolerating her until then.

Ten minutes later, Jake found himself in the snacks aisle, sighing impatiently at his enemy's slowness.
Now
was the time for conversation. "For the love of God, Hannah, pick something!"

Hannah beamed at him saucily. "I thought you'd turned mute on me."

Jake strangled the air in front of him, mimicking with his hands what he'd like to do to Hannah's neck. "Five more minutes, and then I'm leaving you here. And don't think that I won't."

"Fine, fine." Hannah wrinkled her nose and grabbed two bags of chips, a package of chewy chocolate chip cookies, and a bag of Twizzlers. Pausing, she also grabbed a bag of marshmallows. "Do I eat a lot when I'm nervous?"

"You eat a lot period," Jake answered, giving her a gentle shove toward the cash register. Then he realized what she'd said. "Why? Are you nervous or something?" Hannah shrugged enigmatically, and Jake sighed again, though he preoccupied himself with paying for their food.

Back in his truck, Jake turned the heat back on full blast and backed out of his parking space, planning on finding somewhere somewhat normal to binge on junk food. Hannah seemed mysteriously silent as he drove, and every time that Jake opened his mouth to question her, something inside him prevented him from doing so. Fifteen minutes later, he'd parked in the parking lot of Helke Park, where he had taken a walk with Hannah recently. It seemed like a good place to hang out, at least to him.

Chewing on a marshmallow thoughtfully, Hannah tipped her head at Jake and swallowed. "I haven't told anybody what I'm about to tell you." Pausing, Hannah seemed to reconsider. "Well, I mean, I sort of talked to Tisha about it, but I asked her to drop it, and we haven't talked about it since."

The relevance of this information was totally lost on Jake. "Uh-huh." Briefly scowling, Hannah sent a specific finger in Jake's direction, and it made him laugh a little. "Okay, okay. I'm listening. What?"

Hannah popped another marshmallow into her mouth and chewed slowly, watching her lap thoughtfully and maybe even hesitantly. "You remember when…when Greg and I broke up?" Jake nodded uncertainly, but Hannah didn't
look
up. "He told me that it was because I didn't want to go to Formal, but Tisha swears that I was really excited about it. And, I mean, I even had that dress altered and everything, so—I don't know. I feel like he lied to me. You think I changed my mind at the last minute?"

"Doubt it," Jake answered honestly, though he was still a little confused about what Hannah was going on about. "You don't really change your mind too easily. When you're set on something, you're pretty much set."

Sighing, Hannah nodded and chewed on another marshmallow nervously. "Well, I called him, you know. Like, the day before Formal, but he didn't answer, and when I called back a few days later, he was out of town visiting his dad." Hannah looked up and met Jake's eyes. "I left a message with his mom, and he called me back finally. We're supposed to meet tomorrow to talk."

Jake was trying to care—honestly, he was, but it was difficult to conjure up enough emotions about it. "So I guess you're going to confront him."

"Well, yeah," Hannah responded obviously. "Don't you think I should? I have
a
right to know what happened that night, and I fully intend to take advantage of that right. I mean, what if—what if…" Jake raised his eyebrows, and Hannah shrugged, muttering lamely, "What if we had a big fight in the car or something, started yelling and…well, what if it's partially my fault that he wrecked? For all I know, I could have jerked the steering wheel out of his hands, or maybe he was pissed and wrecked on purpose, or maybe we didn't go out for milkshakes like I thought. Maybe we were drinking, and the accident was drunken or—"

"You guys went to the hospital. Your—well, his, really—blood alcohol level is the first thing they'd look at." Unsure of what to say, Jake hesitated for a few moments, trying to think of a way to wing it. "Maybe—"

"Maybe we never broke up. What if the accident was really an accident but he didn't want to date someone who couldn't remember him?"

That theory seemed to make the most sense to Jake. "Hudson's a douche, yeah, but…" Jake let his voice trail, as he really didn't have anything to say. Taking Shirley's advice into consideration, he went on, rambling, "Don't worry about it though. Just ask him tomorrow, and then—then you can call me or whatever and…yeah. We'll see if his story makes sense."