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( CHAPTER TWO )
"So let me get this straight," John B is perched on a side table, head in his hands. "You jumped out of a moving vehicle, ditched your sister, and hid in a tree for an hour and a half because?"
"Alex pulled the dead parent card," I say matter of factly. "Again."
"And then you ran three miles through the marsh to," he took a deep breath, and I got the sense that it was the only thing holding his composure, "to come be storm buddies?"
"Uh-huh."
"Christ, Thea," John B shakes his head and groans. Sitting there, he looks more like a long-suffering parent than a teenage boy.
He and JJ had come in just after dark, dripping wet from surfing the storm surge and probably expecting to find the Chateau empty. Instead, they found me standing in a candle-lit kitchen—the power had gone out—digging around for Big John's old camping lanterns, wearing nothing but a sports bra and shorts—my shirt had been torn to hell in the events of the afternoon—and overall looking like I'd come from the ugly end of a fight.
Now, though, I'm sitting cross-legged on the foldout couch in the living room with a blanket over my bare shoulders feeling a little like I'm being scolded or interrogated, or both.
"Hey JB?" JJ's voice floats from down the hall. "I can't find that first aid kit."
"Coming!" John B calls back and gets up to go help JJ, leaving me alone for the first time since the boys got back. Thank God.
I look down at my legs and wince at the sight of them. They're peppered with angry red scrapes and purpling bruises, and there's an especially gnarly spot on my right knee that's turning an infected yellowish color, but I tell myself that it's just from the glow of the lantern-and-candle light.
I guess it's what I get for fleeing a moving vehicle.
My moment alone ends when JJ appears from around the corner carrying a bright red box labeled "FIRST AID" in one hand and a wet washcloth in the other. John B is behind him, but he hangs back at the end of the hallway.
"Is there anything I can do?" he says, scratching the back of his neck the same way he does when he's lying.
"Nah," JJ waves the other boy off. "This is, like, my specialty."
I realize after a second that he means he's used to having to bandage himself up after his dad... I cut the thought off, but it still pulls tight on my heart.
"Cool. I'll just, uh... I'll be in the other, uh, you know," John B points over his shoulder with his thumb and then turns and disappears down the hallway again.
JJ and I share a look and bust out laughing. John B has had a weird thing about blood, other people's blood specifically, for as long as I've known him. JJ thinks he's secretly a vampire. I just think he's a wimp.
