Ж Oscar Ж
I’d seen Jake fight in the ring and with some guys who messed around outside a bar once, but I’d never seen him get this angry before. He seemed to flow through the air like liquid and managed to floor one of the guys before I could blink. Once down, he flicked out his penknife, ready to slash Jake’s ankles, but I stepped on his fingers. Something broke.
“Don’t even think about it,” I snarled.
But Jake was already moving on, lashing out at another guy, who collapsed, winded. The other two were backing away already, clearly regretting their decision to fight. Already, though the fight wasn’t even over yet, I was starting to calm down. There was no way these guys could take us – well, Jake. We were safe.
Thank God. I’d never been much of a fighter.
But Jake wasn’t going to let the other two go. He grabbed one of them, smashed his head against his and dropped him to the ground. He was unconscious before he could beg for help.
The last guy, the big one who’d started the fight, looked terrified.
“I’m sorry, dude,” he babbled, his face contorted with fear. “I really don’t know…I wasn’t trying to start anything. This was just a joke. Let it go, yeah?”
“Let it go?” Jake echoed, as if hearing those words for the first time. “If our positions were reversed, would you let me go? No, I think you need to be taught a lesson.”
He drew back his fist.
And his phone rang.
Stupefied, I watched him pull it out of his pocket and look at the caller name. I think I saw it before he did.
Summer.
In that second, I didn’t know what came over me. With Jake’s head down, he couldn’t see that one of the guys behind him had picked up a discarded metal rod by the construction site. He couldn’t see him, but I could. I opened my mouth, to warn him, but nothing came out.
“Summer?” Jake said. He was looking at the guy straight ahead of him, completely unaware of the danger behind. “What’s up?”
I could warn him. I could warn him now, and it wouldn’t be too late.
In that second, I saw myself and Summer. We were ten, cycling down the road, laughing about something stupid. I saw Summer at thirteen, crying on my shoulder, heartbroken over her first love. I saw Summer at sixteen, laughing with me in snow and ice, as she told me about her senior project.
Then all I saw was Jake, lying on the concrete, blood trickling down his face, the four guys running away.
I snapped out of it.
“Jake,” I yelled, running over to him. “Oh my God, Jake!”
Unbelievably, he was still conscious.
“It was nothing,” he said, down the phone. His voice sounded perfectly normal, though his eyes were glassy. He was still talking to Summer. I almost laughed. “No, something just came up. Can I call you back later? Bye.”
He hung up and promptly passed out.
I dialed for an ambulance.
***
10.23PM, Friday, Dec. 25th
My Room, 400 West 37th Street, New York
I called Jake, leaving a message about how I going to look for apartments. Then, lugging my stone-age laptop to my bed, I pushed away the wrappers to form a little hole for myself to curl up in. There, I scrolled through apartment listings in Massachusetts, biting on my lip. Oh God. It felt like I was a kid again, looking up all the rides in Disneyland, mentally planning out where I would go and what I would see. Was Jake serious about this? I couldn’t believe that a guy like him would want to spend the rest of his life with me.
