Stonebrook High School

Chapter 77

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Jesse waved to Olivia as they split off from their history class to go to fourth period. As he walked into his math class, he found Jess already sitting inside, fidgeting with a pencil in her hand. She glared at it intently with something on her mind and Jesse sighed. Something had been bothering her for the past few days. He suspected it had to do with Lukas from their small talk in the morning but wasn't sure of it.

"Jess?" He took a seat next to her and she looked up. "Oh. Hey, Jay."

"Something wrong?"

"Hm? What do you mean?"

"You're really out of it, sis. I know that sometimes I can't force you to tell me what's going on, but it's really worrying me. You're my sister. I don't like seeing you this way. You're usually so happy and cheery with a bunch of spunk to back it up but you're just... not mentally here. What's up?"

"Nothing. Really. Don't worry about it."

Jesse stared at her, unamused. "Really? Is that so?"

"Yeah," Jess nodded, playing with the pencil again. "Seriously, I'm okay—"

Jesse grabbed the pencil, wrapping his hand around hers. The cold of the metal hand shot through his arm, his own half-prosthetic arm, and he clutched her fingers as if she could feel the warmth of his own. "Jess. I can tell, dude. It's not fooling anyone. Please, what's bothering you?"

She bit her lip and her eyes began to water, threatening to leak out. "Jay, I... I just have so much to think about. My hand, my friends, my original memories, trying to hide everything that happened from school friends... not to mention I'm constantly in pain from training with Isa. I know I need it, but I wake up in the morning and I just feel so much from the fall. I hate hurting so much."

The two of them had accepted Isa's offer to be trained, apparently to create a new Order of the Stone that would balance out the events of the Witherstorm. Their routines had consisted of physical and mental exercises to strengthen them. One of the worst ones was the exercise where they had to recall the painful emotions the Witherstorm put them through. For Jesse, it had been almost losing his sister and Petra but he had no idea what Jess truly went through. All he knew was that she woke up not knowing who she was and why she was there, being dragged into a battle that would make her almost lose her life. Jesse held her with both hands now, looking down at the table.

"I'm really sorry I can't comfort you any more than I already have. But please, lean on me, okay? We gotta take care of each other." He pulled her in for a hug and held her tight. "If there's anything you want to talk about, don't be scared to, alright? You just have to remind me not to overreact or freak out like I did when I found out you were at Lukas's place."

Jess pulled away from the hug, face gloomy with pensive thoughts. "Well, speaking of Lukas, I'm... so angry with myself for doing that to him. He didn't deserve it."

"It's been two months since then, Jess." The brother brushed some hair out of her face. "I thought you moved on from what you told me this morning."

"I lied. Obviously." She weakly laughed. "You see, we used to be friends even before high school, Jay."

"... What do you mean?"

"We knew each other in preschool. But I didn't remember any of that, obviously. And besides, our memories were actually wiped twice."

"Twice? Wait, what?"

Jess looked up at him. "I thought this was something Isa would have told you about."