Emily's Heart

Chapter 7: Jake P.O.V.

7  Doing the Right Thing

Jake

I felt like a wuss having Tristan walk with me to the bus stop, but he’d insisted. “There’s strength in numbers,” he’d said. T tried to make it sound like it was a way to help each other out. Yeah, right. He didn’t need my puny ass to protect him. But I wasn’t going to argue with a guy built like a mountain.

Tristan walked tall, whistled some zippy tune, and looked straight ahead. The way he carried himself practically begged shadow dudes to try and stop him.

I, on the other hand, did my best imitation of a scurrying rat. I kept my head slightly dipped, my eyes darting from side to side, my face plastered with the same dour look most people wore.

“Dude, you’re bummin’ me out,” Tristan said. “Lighten up, J.”

“Why don’t you just put a sign on me that says ‘Kick his ass’.”

“I got your back, J. You keep holding your face in that sad, nasty look it’s gonna get frozen that way.”

That’s the kind of stupid thing my mom said when I was little and I crossed my eyes. “If you keep that up your eyes will get stuck that way,” she’d say. Yeah, and you go blind if you jerk off. I hadn’t gone blind.

I threw my shoulders back anyway and stopped hunching over quite so much. I didn’t dare smile or join T in whistling a tune, but I at least looked out in front of me.

“See, doesn’t that feel better?”

“A little, maybe.”

Actually, it felt more than a little better. It was amazing how much lighter I felt by standing up straight and changing the expression on my face.

“It’s kind of a nice day. You wanna take the bus or just keep walking?” asked Tristan.

We were about twenty yards from the bus stop. There were two young guys and a chick hanging out there. Both of the guys were almost as big as Tristan. That answered it.

“Um, how ’bout we hoof it the rest of the way,” I said.

“Whatever you say …” I picked up my speed but realized Tristan had stopped. “J, hold up. Look.” He motioned with his head toward the bus stop. “Trouble up ahead.”

He was talking about the two guys and the girl at the bus stop. They were gathered around someone else.

Shit! It’s a mom with a kid. Goddammit!

We watched as they crowded toward the woman. She pulled her little boy closer, sat him on her lap, and encircled her arms around him.

Stupid woman! What are you doing out here, alone, with your kid? Don’t you know anything?

They hadn’t noticed us. We could turn and run fast and hard and try to forget what we’d seen. I wanted to tell Tristan to forget about it and cross the street to the other side and keep right on walking. But I didn’t want him to see how chicken shit I was. And no amount of running would make me stop wondering about the fate of that woman and her kid.

Dammit, I don’t need to wonder. I knew what was going to happen. At the very least, they’d take her child to a place where the shadows lurked. For what purpose, I didn’t know. But I was sure that if the shadow people were involved, it wasn’t a place where kids rode ponies and ate ice cream.

“Do you think we can take them?” I asked.

“No prob. You take skinny chick, and I’ll take the other two.”