Banished To Ipswich

Chapter 10

As the last of the final year students get picked up by their parents, and the campus is laid silent Bailey leaves her room. Still in her uniform adorned with a black band on her left arm she wanders the grounds.

Looking up from the ground she meets eyes with Lance across the lawn. They haven't talked since Chase's death, but seeing her friend she feels her eyes fill up with tears.

She runs across the lawn, and he catches her. Her head rests on his shoulder as she cries, and she can hear sobs slipping from Lance as well. He strokes her hair and back, consoling her to his best abilities.

Neither leaves over the break. Bailey's parents are touring scientific conferences, so she has permission to stay, as well as a few other. Lance lives in town, in a small apartment fit for his salary and relationship status, and doesn't leave either. He works any courses the school needs teachers for, failed grades and whatnot. In his spare time he is by her side for as much as possible, his car the last one to leave in the evenings.

It takes until the beginning of July before Bailey asks that they revisit their gathering.

"Are you sure?" Lance isn't sure he is ready either. She nods, adjusting the band on her arm.

They wait until nightfall, even if the late sun surely does nothing to hide them. No one is seen when they walk from the dorms to the woods, both those gone from campus and staying joining the festivities down at the beach. They walk in silence, branches cracking under their feet. As they reach the spot Bailey stops, staring silently at the tree and two stones. Lance walks out from behind her, and stands beside her, doing the same. It's a silence of thinking, wondering what to do now.

The shadows have gotten longer. A crack is heard, the breaking of a twig, and the two look up.

"The prodigal son returns." A few feet from them, on the other side of the fallen pine, hands in the black coat's pockets, stands Chase. He smiles gently, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

Before he, or anyone, has had a chance to utter another word both Bailey and Lance has jumped the tree trunk and crashed into him in a crushing hug. His shirt gets wetted with tears, Lance's jacket gets wrinkled, and Bailey's words become hacking.

"You're alive." She mumbles. "You're alive, thank God, yore alive."

When they part from the hug even Chase himself is redeyed, tears dripping down his cheeks. He orders them to sit down, and they retake their places, as if their royal court never fell apart due to their loss. Bailey on her stone, legs folded to the side under her, hand supporting her, Lance on his.

And Chase explains. He explains the reason he came to Ipswich, about his powers, about that night at the barn.

He came to Ipswich with the intention to gain more power, to make Caleb surrender his, and then leave. He didn't expect to make friends. His motivation changed, from selfish greed to care. No longer was it for himself that he wanted the power, it was for all of them. To make it easier for them.

After the night at the barn, where he failed devastatingly to do so, to do what he could to help, he had been lying low. He had to make sure they thought him gone, if not dead, due to the lack of body, then at least fled from the state. He only came back today, hoping he could find a way to contact them without raising suspicion.

"Remember the first time we were here?" He asks and pushes his hand down his pocket. The others nod. There's a movement in Chase's pocket, and then he pulls up his hand again. A transparent bag with green fibers lay in his flattened palm. He looks at Bailey with seriousness. "I didn't carry it since lunch."

He moves his gaze to Lance and lets out a laugh.

"I just thought 'Let's try it, why not? She might be up for it, she might not. She's been up for most things before.'." He lets out a shaky breath and looks down, shaking his head. "I was scared shitless when you caught us. I didn't have an explanation, where I got it from, it was just an impulsive thing."

The wind blows through their quiet gathering, summer blowing life in their cold bodies. Cold since the death of their friend.

"But then she spoke, and she knew you, made you not report us. She, who has been here shorter than the both of us. She'd made friends with us both, and made us talk, become friends. I had planned to confront him during the ball, but I wanted more time. More time with you, so I postponed it." Chase's voice filled with frustration. "And then, when graduation came closer, I just thought 'Fuck it. What's the worst that can happen?'."

"Curse Caleb Danvers." Bailey mutters, beginning the sentence with a scorn and ending it with a smile. "Curse all of them." They all laugh at the joke, the particular choice of words after Chase's reveal.

"Yeah, fuck them." Lance laughs. "Fucking Sons of Ipswich. You should have seen what Bailey did to them in front of the whole school." He gestures to her and she laughs.

"It was nothing!" She squeals, trying to hold it in. Chase looks from one to the other, starting grin again, before she bursts out laughing. "Okey, I punched Caleb."

"You did?" Chase laughs. "Atta girl."

"He deserved it." She defends herself, still laughing. Lance turns to the sky.

"Fuck the Sons of Ipswich!" He shouts at the top of his lungs. The others laugh and join him in a choir of curses, of the names Caleb Danvers, Reid Garwin, Pouge Perry, and Tyler Simms, the four Sons of Ipswich.

Th light falters, but their laughter doesn't. They don't waste an ounce of Chase's magic, every last breath of it is used. He even produces a bottle spirits, which he promises will not age him because it wasn't magic. If a teacher had decided to stay the break, or a student not been at the beach or swept in their covers sound asleep, they might have hear the laughter. They might have found them guilty of criminal offense for hiding a supposedly dead person, or they might have joined them. The smoke gets blown in each other's faces, the bottle passed between the thrones of those who cheated death.

In the morning they find themselves still there, half asleep, pained from their hard resting spots, but happy.

"But where are you going to stay?" Lance looks at Chase, a frown etched over his features. Chase stretches, a vile cracking coming from his back.

"I don't know, I'll figure something out." He mutters. Lance shakes his head.

"You can stay at my place." Chase is about to protest, and do so loudly. "No, it's nothing. Just until Bailey graduates."