Maybe It's Magic

Chapter 14

Molly got the text at about five p.m. on Monday. Jake's truck had been gone all morning and they hadn't seen each other for two whole days by then, but she was doing fine. Her hair was now black, after all. It was a serious color that would help her stay in charge, help her think about all this much more rationally. Then she got the text from Jake and all rationality flew out the window, down the street, and hitchhiked out of town. 

Jake "needed" her. It was "important." She tried to call back first, also second, third, just a bunch of times – cursing his name the whole time. He knew she hated it when he was vague in text. It left too much room for panic. But it went to voicemail. Then she tried to text back, but the only thing he texted was an address.

Once she stopped panicking long enough to actually look at the address, she recognized it. It was his dad's place in The Poconos. She kept texting for more details, but nothing was coming back and his phone was still going to voicemail. Maybe it was dead. She wasn't melodramatic enough to think he was dead, but maybe he was hurt.

Then again, he'd texted "it's important" not "it's an emergency." Maybe he'd ruined something in the house and needed her to help hide the evidence. Then again, maybe he'd wrapped his truck around a tree and was desperately reaching for his broken phone even now and she was sitting here freaking out instead of saving his life!

She tried to calm herself down. That would fall under "emergency," not "important" and Jake would know to contact the police before her. Or would he?

She was being silly. This was just paranoia because they hadn't hung out for two whole days. Maybe, after she helped with whatever this crisis was, they could revisit the word "codependent" and how it might apply to them.

For now, she needed to fix it. She hoped it wasn't something ridiculous like a small animal in the house or a tiny little bug. He had once called her over to his house in the middle of the night to kill a spider. But she'd given him enough shit over the spider incident that he'd probably call anyone but her if that was the case. Still, she could easily imagine him cowering from a raccoon right about now.

Whatever the crisis was, she only hoped it wouldn't take long and that there would be a minimum of physical contact and that it was a crystal-free zone, which it should be. She'd been to the mountain house twice. Sure, it was when they were little, but if a sexy crystal was going to pop up at his dad's mountain place, it would have done so before now.

Besides that, she didn't want to be home right now. Once her parents got in from work, her mom had dived straight into her DVR collection of terrible Hallmark movies and her dad was in Star Wars model ship mode. Both of them were useless as either parents or distractions, so she might as well face Jake and whatever tragedy had befallen him. She was sure it couldn't be too bad.

Still, she packed a plastic bin with all possible essentials: water bottles, a bucket, cleaning supplies, a first aid kit, whatever food she could scrounge, then more food because this was Jake, batteries, flashlights, candles, and duct tape. It might have a certain serial killer air, but she felt like that had to cover anything. It was a good thing her parents were so tied up or they'd wonder where all their stuff was going. She'd bring it back. It's not like it was Earthquake season in Pennsylvania now... or ever.

She kept checking her phone, but it was still silent. Didn't matter. She'd see him and possibly slap him upside the head in about forty minutes. By the time she got to the cabin, if something with three levels could be called a cabin, it was still bright out. They could figure whatever it was out and easily get down from the mountains before dark.

Jake's truck was there and it didn't look damaged. The house, with its porch on stilts and long set of wooden steps to the living level, didn't look like it was falling down, either, at least not from the outside. "Jake?"