Home is a Four Letter Word

chapter two

Late February

Mr. Mooney was asleep when the clock Jake had fatefully been watching struck four. The three students in the room glanced over at each other for the first time since they had accepted their demise to be stuck in this predicament together for an hour and simultaneously decided it wasn't their responsibility to stay any longer so Mooney could wake up and tell them to go home for himself.

For the twenty minutes following detention, Jake sat in his truck and scrolled through useless Instagram updates on his phone, hoping that maybe if he came home a little closer to five it would be more realistic to tell his parents he ran to Walmart with Aaron and Hunter after class instead of telling them the whole story and having his father shit-talk 'women these days who can't take being treated like a lady anymore.' When he eventually got around to leaving his parking spot, he was one of only two cars left in the parking lot. He figured the other to be Mooney's and for a moment considered going back inside to wake him up, but that thought was quickly sidetracked by the person he saw perched on the curb outside of the front door, head rested on his arms watching the empty parking lot without a care in the world. As he drove closer, Jake recognized him as the boy from detention and felt a moral obligation to at least stop for a person who had just spent the past hour with him, even if he was nothing more than a stranger.

'Stranger danger' was a term Jake unfortunately had no concept of.

"Hey," His voice cut over the rumble of his truck's engine. "You got a ride?"

Detention-boy looked up to Jake, a twist of suspicion lining his face as if he was either surprised to be acknowledged or hesitant to answer the question. Curling his lips in as he studied Jake's intentions, he flipped his phone between his fingers in careful contemplation. Jake thought maybe he hadn't heard him correctly, but when he opened his mouth to speak again, he was cut off by a smooth voice—a little faster than his own and completely void of the town's assigned accent.

"I missed the bus." His head tilted over as he stated the obvious. "And... my mom is out of town..."

"So... no?"

"Yeah, no. I don't. But one of my coworkers gets off at six, so it's fine."

He brushed it off like it was nothing out of the ordinary, but Jake couldn't imagine sitting on the concrete for another two hours and wondered how this kid had so readily accepted that fate. Jake tapped his fingers out on the leather steering wheel in contemplation, not knowing whether to leave him alone or insist that he take him up on his offer. After careful deliberation, the latter won.

"Get in. I'll take you."

"You don't have to do that–"

"It's no big deal. I've got time to kill anyway."

It was the truth, but Jake somehow felt like it was a lie. The other boy took his words as enough of an argument to believe him and ended up climbing into the passenger side of the truck, sliding his backpack on the floorboard and sitting down on the bench seat like he was scared to break it. His entire aura was cautious, weighing his moves and evaluating his options. It was a kind of hesitancy Jake didn't like to see on others. The kind that reminded him a little too much of himself. This kid was calculating risks, watching for the moment he would know he had made the wrong move. Confidence was the foundation of his expression—his jaw strong, ready to be defiant—but Jake knew that cold exterior had to be a guise.

What are you so afraid of?

"Where to?" Jake asked, pulling out of the lot just slow enough to convince the both of them that he wasn't that bad of a driver.