Ice Cold Hearts

Chapter 4:

    Over summer break, Jake went to band camp with all of his bandmates from his 11th grade class. The trip lasted 2 1/2 months. I personally didn't like the idea of sharing rooms with random kids. Family camping was a completely different story though.
    Jake and I had talked about his trip last night as part of our 'catching-up-on-my-life' stories. "Going to Lake Guit with Mr. John-" the band teacher "was surprisingly cool. The tar mountains are so beautiful with waterfalls and ponds. My favorite part of the trip was midnight swimming with Jaxson and his lady friend. Oh, and he tried to set me up with one of the girls but I wasn't interested in any of them. And-"
    I wanted to ask who Jake was interested in. There had to be at least one girl. This question was like a bad itch that you just can't get. I wanted to but the words wouldn't come out.
    "-We would turn the stereo to 97 before playing some rock music. Mr. John let us play until five minutes before dinner so we could pick first seats by the water."
    Jackson and Parker were Jake's best friends but Parker didn't like being in class. Jake continued telling me how him and Jax would play so loud that Stacy and Lola held their ears. It was really no surprise with those two brats.
    Jake stories were always great but there was only two ends to them either the stories would have happy endings or very sad endings, never a happy medium with Jake.
    "My least favorite part," Jake said slowly, "was the ride home, I was about halfway back to my school, 10 miles from here, when I started to see dead bodies. It hit me after a second that most of the bodies were girls.
    "I asked Mr. John to drop me off at your place to make sure you and Joanna we're OK. I failed, if I would've been there smart and got there sooner-"
    I couldn't let him feel it was his fault for my accident. "Don't do this to yourself Jake, if you weren't there I would be dead. You are my hero for doing what was right, thank you!"