Jesy assumed that the people Leigh-Anne listed out had to be her family. "How?" She didn't understand how she reminded Leigh-Anne of all of them. She didn't understand how she could remind her of anybody.
Leigh-Anne sat up and Jesy followed her lead. Leigh hugged her knees and tried to hide her face a little. She managed a shrug. "I don't know . . . You're just . . . like them." She pulled off her locket and at the same time held her breath. She held it out to Jesy.
Jesy took it slowly and looked at it for a moment before opening it up. The moonlight shining through their windows hit the picture on the inside illuminating five smiling faces. Leigh-Anne was right in the middle her smile looking much brighter than Jesy had ever seen. Most of the time Leigh-Anne smiled now it was fake but there was some times when there was a ghost of that smile from the picture. That was the smile Jesy had thought was real but it was literally nothing compared to the smile in the picture. She closed the locket and looked at Leigh-Anne who had tears rolling down her cheeks.
"They're all almost as beautiful as you Leigh." Jesy whispered. She handed back the locket.
"Thank you." Leigh-Anne choked out.
"W-what happened . . . to them?" Jesy asked.
"There was an accident . . ." Leigh-Anne said sniffing. Her body was shaking with the memories. "We were all going out to a book signing –my parents were authors." She took a breath to ward off the feeling of nausea. "We were heading to a place called South Shields . . . it was sort of a road-trip . . . but Daddy . . . he took a short cut." Leigh-Anne started to hiccup and she had to stop.
"A short cut?" Jesy asked. She absentmindedly touched Leigh-Anne's hand on her knee. "Go on." She said encouragingly. "I'm here." She wasn't sure why she felt the need to say those words but they just came out. It wasn't like Leigh-Anne actually cared.
Leigh-Anne breathed deeply in an effort to stop the hiccups that she knew might lead to gagging. She didn't want to throw up in Jesy's bed too. They'd have nowhere to sleep. "It . . . it was over a bridge." Saying the word bridge made her shudder. There was only one thing she feared more than bridges.
Jesy nodded encouragingly. She was being so supportive Leigh-Anne found it hard to not at least try to finish telling her. For some reason she now felt that this girl would be able to help her deal with what happened.
"We were d-d-d-driving over the b-b-b-bridge when . . . it s-s-started breaking . . . we got out of the car but . . . the entire thing was shaking and we fell." She was sobbing now.
Jesy wasn't sure what was appropriate to do to make her stop crying or make her feel better. She wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to her. Leigh-Anne was sobbing into Jesy's shoulder she needed to be held. She had lived with this memory for so long and not once did she ever speak of it to anyone. Just two days after everything happened she was taken on a plane by people she didn't know and brought here. She never got a proper mourning period and had tried to shove everything out of her head. But now she felt like she needed help. The pain was too much to bear alone. And here was Jesy offering to bare it with her. She let go of the hug and crawled until she was sitting sideways in Jesy's lap. She pushed her face into Jesy's neck.
Jesy wrapped her arms around Leigh-Anne not understanding what kind of hug this was. All she knew was that she wanted her only friend to feel better so she would do whatever she thought would help.
"I can . . . hardly remember but the next thing I knew the bridge was like breaking . . . and I was the only one left on the bridge . . . they were all hanging by like a piece of wood." Leigh-Anne was breathing fast and hard against Jesy's neck, her arms around Jesy's waist clutching tightly as if she too was hanging for her life.
