The Understorey, Book One of The Leaving Series (33 page)

Marisa Hartford belonged to a family of
equine veterinarians. Apparently, the intelligent gene skipped her
generation as she was the only child and one of her family, knowing
what I do about the Hartfords, lacking in the fortitude to weigh
the pros and cons of assisting in a highly dangerous and highly
illegal crime. I will give Marisa credit where credit is due
though, she had no idea what Taylor and Jesse were doing with the
help she afforded them, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Hartford family is a decent family. They
lived moderately and had no need or want for anything. It is
definitely a possibility that they are one of the wealthiest
families in Bluefield, but they are frugal. They don’t squander
their profits like most families do and by far and away, excluding
Marisa. They are a family of morals.

Those morals were lost on Marisa. She chose
to help the imbeciles against her better judgment and for what do
you ask? For further social rank in a high school she was less than
a year from never seeing again.

Marisa worked two evenings a week, usually
Friday and Saturday evenings, if she wasn’t cheering, to help out
at her family’s equestrian practice. Here, she would answer phones
and make appointments. Marisa, legally, along with her family’s
careful practice and procedures, had absolutely no access to any of
the medicines her grandfather or father kept on hand at their
office. These seemingly harmless, yet potent glass viles were kept
under lock and key and regularly inventoried.

Every day, Marisa’s grandfather would take
his lunch at the exact same hour each day and leave the keys to the
metal and glass cabinet inside a locked drawer in his hundred year
old desk. The key to this desk hung on a ring that he kept with him
at all times. The good doctor felt safe in thinking there would be
no way those viles could be stolen, short of breaking the cabinet
itself. At the end of his work day, he would place that key ring in
a bowl on a table in his foyer.

Two weeks prior to Thanksgiving break, Marisa
Hartford snuck into the foyer when she knew no one would be around
and stole the singular key that opened the desk to gain access to
the keys to the cabinet that held the tiny viles she so hazardously
required.

    “I’m gonna’ get the mail,”
she screamed to her mother in the kitchen.
    “No need. I’ve already gotten it,” her mother
said, but Marisa pretended not to hear.
She walked to the end of her hundred yard driveway, the burning
ember of a lit cigarette, her only guide.
    “Jesse?” She asked.
    “Don’t say my name, stupid.”
    “Sorry,” she apologized.
She handed him the key.
    “I’ll be back in an hour. Keep your cell phone
on,” he ordered and rushed to his Mustang parked a hundred feet
away.
Marisa hung her head back toward the house and opened the
door.
    “I told you Marisa, I’d already gotten the
mail.”
    “Oh,” Marisa lied, “I didn’t hear you.”

Marisa felt a stone settle heavily in the pit
of her stomach. It was a stone heavy with shame and she would
continue to add more and more, eventually weighing herself down
enough that she would forget to eat by the week’s end.

Marisa received a text from Jesse Thomas
thirty minutes later, telling her to meet him at her bedroom
window. She quietly went to her room and was back out in less than
five seconds with the key in hand. She acted as though she was
searching for something on the foyer table and made enough noise to
distract the family from her true task. She replaced the key back
into the exact order she found it and walked into the kitchen
acting as cheerfully as she could without arising suspicion.

    The next day at school,
Marisa met Jesse outside of her car to pick up the key he had made.
She could have taken the key that night but she didn’t want to take
the risk of owning that on a night she was acting strangely as it
was. You see, Marisa’s mom checked up on her thoroughly. I’m
guessing she saw a deficiency in her daughter and didn’t know how
to compensate and Marisa knew this. She took the key from Jesse and
he barely acknowledged her.

I felt sorry for Marisa when I learned of
this information, such low self esteem. Who, in their right mind,
would sink so low for further social gain? For any reason
really?

The week of Thanksgiving break, Marisa
‘volunteered’ to cover the reception desk at the clinic because she
‘needed money’. In fact, Marisa ‘volunteered’ to cover the desk
every night that week and, while her grandfather ate, she would
steal away and remove the cabinet keys from his desk, and
methodically extract an exact measured amount of the horse
tranquilizer Ketamine through each individual wax vile stopper by
syringe, enough that it would eventually add up to the dosage
Taylor and Jesse needed but too little an amount to cause suspicion
to the naked eye.

Then, she would place the cap on the syringe,
lock the cabinet door, return the keys to his desk, and none would
be the wiser. She repeated this process every single day during
Thanksgiving break and by the end of the week, she had enough to
heavily sedate a seventeen year old boy, about my size.

    Jules and I arrived home
from Mauch Chunk the following Saturday evening, rather late, and I
dreaded having to go to church early the next morning but
considered that Jules would be just as tired as I was and we could
lean on one another, literally and figuratively. I was excited
because we still had Monday and Tuesday off and the school week was
only going to be three days before the weekend came upon us again.
Basically, lots of time to take it easy. I had to admit, the
football season was taking its toll on my body. I definitely didn’t
get enough sleep either. Jules occupied my every thought.

I actually worried about what I was going to
do when I reached Philadelphia and would be required to think. The
only way I could get away with it then was because school was no
challenge whatsoever. I thought that was a good point to bring up
to Jules for the argument that we needed to marry as soon as
possible. I reminded myself to remember that one later.

    The next day, at church,
Jules was already in the youth hall when I walked in to greet her.
I noticed she was sitting on top of a table on her own and staring
in the direction of the wall that was concealed by the door. I
walked in and glanced to my left to see what she was staring
at.

Jesse Thomas and Taylor Williams stared
silently back at her. A silent fight of wills and I’m pretty sure
Jules was winning. I didn’t say a word to either of them. I walked
in, grabbed Jules’ hand and guided her outside. She had hung her
jacket up earlier and didn’t have it so I gave her mine.

    “What the....?” I
asked.
    “I have no idea.”
    “They never come to church. Their parents are
always making excuses for them.”
    “I know why,” Jules said, panicked.
    “Now, Jules, they might just be trying to mess
with our heads and obviously it’s working. Look at you. Who knows,
they could be coming for a better reason.”
Yeah, right.
    “No Elliott, they’re here for devious reasons.
If they were coming here for innocent reasons than they would have
approached me, apologized, try to atone for what they had done. No.
They’re here to intimidate us.”   
    “Okay, let’s just get to the church and sit with
our parents.”
She nodded.

We walked back into the hallway and passed
the doors to the youth hall quickly trying to avoid Taylor and
Jesse but unfortunately forgot about the second entrance to the
hall and once we passed it, they followed quickly.

    “Where y’all going?” Asked
Jesse.

I knew who the mastermind was. I knew who the
evil one really was. Taylor was only mean and Marisa was only
stupid. They were merely pawns in Jesse’s game, but
Jesse
,
Jesse was the real tyrant. The one whom Jules was most afraid
of.

    “None of your business
Jesse,” I said. “Leave us be.”
    “Wait a minute,” he said, “I want to make
amends.”
    “Nope.”
    “Please Elliott? I’m really sorry about
everything that happened. I miss our friendship.”
He was a terrible liar. I stopped, took a deep breath and stared
down at him.
    “And what is the ‘everything’ that you’re sorry
about Jesse?” I asked, falsely hoping he would own up to breaking
into Jules’ room.
    “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding,” he
evaded.
    “What misunderstanding?”
    “Our fight in History.”
    “Nope. That was no misunderstanding. What I want
to know is if you’re sorry for the other things you’ve done.”

“What are you talking about?”
    “Don’t play coy with me. You’re the one who
decided to break into Jules’ home and mess with us. That’s what you
should be sorry for. Do you have any idea how badly I wish to hurt
you for doing that? You’re lucky we’re at church.”

    “Am I? He goaded.
I came within inches of his face and clinched my teeth. I still
held Jules’ shaking hand. He
was
lucky. Very.
    “Get away from us Jesse, you
and
Taylor,
and
stay
away from us.”
    “I don’t understand Elliott! We’re just trying
to make amends here!” His voice trailed off as we ran to the
narthex.

We heard them laughing as they walked the
other way. We sat in the children’s cry room and I grabbed Jules’
hand so the current could calm us both down and I could read her
thoughts. It took several minutes but it worked, as always, and
soon after, we joined our parents. We didn’t mention what had
happened to anyone, though. After all, hindsight’s twenty
twenty.

    After church, both our
families, like all the families in Bramwell did after church, went
to Babe’s to eat. By then, Jules and I had almost forgotten about
Jesse and Taylor and were having an extraordinary time with a bunch
of kids from school. We all chatted about our vacations, what we
did, who we saw, what we ate and we were asked a lot of questions
about how Mauch Chunk was. All in all, it was a harmless
conversation until Marisa Hartford, who had been hiding at the end
of the shared table, chimed in with, what I thought at the time
was, the most peculiar question.
    “What were you two talking about with Jesse and
Taylor outside the youth hall? It seemed to get pretty heated,” she
asked.

Everyone at our table respected us enough not
to mention their names. Recently, it seemed, the group had split
into two, the Jesse half and the Elliott half. They knew how we
felt about them, so it came as a surprise that she would be so bold
as to ask us in front of our half no less.

That was my first real inkling that she might
be in on, at the very least, what was going on in Taylor’s and
Jesse’s private world.

    “Why?” Jules asked
suspiciously. “Is there something in particular you wanted to know
about?”
    “Nothing in particular,” Marisa lazily
declared.
    “Well, since you’re such fabulous friends with
Taylor and you’re so curious, maybe you should ask her,” I
said.
    “Maybe I will,” Marisa said snidely and left the
table tipping her chair back. It clanged to the floor. Cappelli
picked up her chair for her and turned to us.
    “What was that all about?” He asked.
    “I’m not exactly sure,” I said, “but I think I’m
going to find out.”
    That night Jules and I sat at our rock bridge
and braved the chill night air. She packed a basket, like she
usually did, of hot chocolate or coffee, and homemade warm cookies.
We curled up underneath our blanket, drank and talked.
    “Hey,” I remembered, “I wanted to ask you
something.”
    “No, I will not marry you after
graduation.”
    “But you haven’t even heard my reasoning
yet!”
    “Okay, let’s hear it.”
    “Okay, well, you know when we go off to
Philadelphia that I’m going to have to put my full attention on
studying right?”
    “Right. So?”
    “Well,  I mean, technically that’s not
really an issue
now.
I mean, high school is so breezy, for
both of us.”
    “Don’t lump me in with you. I actually have to
work for my grades,” she laughed.
    “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, right now, you pretty much
occupy ninety-nine percent of my thoughts and the other one percent
is occupied with me trying to convince myself that I need to stop
thinking about you constantly.”
    “Well, that’s just a hormone thing babe. It’ll
wear with time.”
    “I don't think so Jules.”
    “You don’t?”   
    “No, in fact, I know so and I came up with the
theory that my
thirst
for you could possibly be tamed if,
perhaps, we were married. At least then, I could come home to you
and when we said goodnight it wouldn’t mean a long walk home or a
short drive.”
    “That’s an incredibly convincing
argument,”
    “It is, isn’t it?”
    “But....,” she said.
    “But, nothing. I’ve settled it. We’ll marry in
the summer.” I sighed, “Feels good to get that off my chest. More
coffee?”
I reached for the thermos.
    “Elliott,” she said.
She placed her hand on mine and I dropped my mug.  I let it
slide a few feet in front of me but didn’t bother to retrieve it. I
turned my gaze on hers.
    “We should wait, “I said, guessing her next
sentence.
    “Really, we should Elliott. We just can’t risk
it. We can wait and I promise it will be the best thing we’ve ever
done.”
I sighed in defeat.
    “I won’t give up,” I muttered under my breath as
I reached for my dropped mug.

School crept up on us too quickly and
Thursday came even more so.
    “Today’s the day,” Jules said.
    “Today’s the day,” I repeated.

I wasn’t looking forward to the
confrontation. It could only go one of two ways and frankly neither
felt that appetizing to me. Either Jesse and Taylor would ignore us
completely and go on planning what they had been planning, or Jesse
would snap and start to fight me right then and there. I knew that
the confrontation would get either one of those ‘not ideal’ results
but I wasn’t going to let him feel like I was passively going to
endure his or Taylor’s insanity.