Sarah Benadine is Dead

Chapter XVI, Part I

Allison Groves's isolation from her friends meant that she missed out on much of what occurred in the final months of the school year. This was to her benefit; the horrors that her six friends faced as the year drew to its close were great. And they started—or so the story would later be told—with Jared Wilkins's bloody nose.

If Jared Wilkins had one great fault in his school years it was that he was loud. He did not mean to be so; the amount of energy he'd been blessed with simply ensured it. In theory, it was not a terribly large problem. It did not make him necessarily imprudent. He was quite able to control himself in the right situations. Serious situations, as it were. But anytime he was caught around Quintus Zima or any member of his gang always proved to be the wrong situation.

At least the boys of Quintus's group had taken an immediate disliking to Jared in their first year together. He was something of an easy target to begin with because of his build: short and thin. His boyish features—enhanced by a pair of bright blue eyes—would stick with him into adulthood, giving him a constant youthful appearance. These things alone were not enough to put Jared on the permanent radar of Quintus's gang; it was that unhindered energy. Without trying to—or even wanting to—he called a lot of attention to himself. By their second year at Briargate, Quintus Zima and all of his friends had made a target of Jared out of sheer irritation.

In all fairness, even if Jared Wilkins had not become such an adversary of Quintus's gang he probably would not have avoided what happened one day mid-April. Dean Procter in particular was still seething from the fight in January, an incident that, despite his best efforts, he had yet to, as he saw it, make right. Jared's infamy upped the intensity, however. There was an undercurrent of desperation that clung to this particular encounter that could be credited only to the mixture of indignation from the last fight and longstanding dislike of Jared in general.

Vince and Dean found him in between classes. It was bad luck that he happened to be on his own. Dean had gotten one good punch in—an oddity for him—before Jared had taken off, hoping his sheer speed would be enough to get away. His nose was spurting blood but he knew it wouldn't last long. It would be healed before he knew it. Luck was with him, and he was able to make it to his next class before Dean and Vince caught him. His teacher, Professor St. Paul, gave him an incredulous look as he rushed in. Professor St. Paul did not need to even ask what had happened; he knew once Dean and Vince trampled in behind him. Jared was painfully aware that his shirt was stained with blood. He hoped Caleb would let him borrow a clean one.

Caleb did, in fact, let Jared borrow a shirt. Of course, he still had to bring the stained shirt home, and it was still almost certainly going to give his mother a heart attack. He'd been in his fair share of scraps with Quintus Zima's gang even beyond the big one in January, but he'd always managed to keep the bloody clothing to a minimum in the past. It had certainly never been this bad—a little ironic, considering he'd dodged most damage.

There came one blessing when Jared made it home: his mother was not there. A little perplexing—his eight year old sister Judy was home, and with everything that had been happening in town as of late his mother had been militant about her getting a ride home from school every night. Florence Wilkins had not worried so much about her two sons, Jared and eighteen-year-old Jimmy, as they always walked home with every single O'Brien, Beaumont, and Bradbury who attended Briargate, along with Wylie Grace and her younger sister. As soon as her brothers got through the front door, Judy announced—unprompted, which meant Florence Wilkins had told her to do it a million times—that their mother had run out to get ingredients for that night's dinner.

Briefly, Jared debated simply burning his shirt. Eventually he decided that wouldn't do any good; his mother would certainly notice it was missing. She was observant in many ways that drove Jared crazy. There would be no easy way out of this. If he was lucky, her voice wouldn't reach levels only a dog could hear when she yelled at him.