Three.
Five Minutes
Salmon Seesaw. There it was. The secret family password. When our parents couldn’t pick us up from school or practice or whatever and they sent a neighbor, they had to use the secret family password, or Linus and I didn’t budge.
Jens smirked at my dropped-open mouth, which pissed me off. I did my best not to let it show.
“Well, that changes things. How did you know about that?” Not like my parents were sending him to pick me up from school. A dagger of pain shot through my heart, and I swallowed it down like a compartmentalizing champ as I began to bite my nails. My parents would never know about my schooling ever again. I never thought I’d hear the secret password after that. My heart warmed and hardened simultaneously. “Spill it, John.”
“Jens,” he corrected irritably. “And I know it because it’s my job to know it.” He pointed to the bedroom. “Pack.”
“Well, that’s nice and vague,” I grumbled, spinning on my heel away from him. “Tell me to pack. Like I’m not allowed to ask questions of the guy ruining my bathroom rug.” I stomped into the bedroom Tonya and I shared and grabbed a duffel bag. “Pack for a day, or longer?” I inquired, dreading the answer.
Jens turned on the shower to rinse the blood off his shoulder and called out, “Pack everything you don’t want burned to the ground in the next five minutes.” He sniffed the air like a dog. “Or less. I say go, and we run with whatever’s in your green backpack.”
I could feel my pulse banging in my cheeks. My green backpack. Not my school bag or overnight duffel, but the bag our parents made us keep packed and ready that had essentials in it in case whatever it was that made my parents up and move us around the country time and time again caught up with us. I got it out without thinking and shoved more clothing and a few keepsakes into the sack, praying it was not happening all over again.
No. Not this time. I was the only adult left, so the decision to leave or stay was mine. I wanted a home – was desperate for it. Sure, the tiny apartment wasn’t exactly the white picket fence I was dreaming of, but it was mine. I wasn’t leaving unless I was ready, and a stranger yelling at me didn’t make me antsy to follow him anywhere. The instinct to run away from him was stronger than the secret family password in that moment. “How… how do you know about my green backpack?”
Jens harrumphed, as if I was the one being a problem. “Just do it!”
I marched back out into the hallway and shouted at the bathroom door, “Don’t you think you can tell me what to do without giving me answers! I make the decisions now, and I say I don’t have to leave!”
“Dammit, Lucy! This isn’t the Fourth of July! I won’t fight with you about this. I don’t care if I have to pick you up and take you myself. We’re leaving in four minutes!”
My head whipped around in his direction. Fourth of July? It was my least favorite holiday ever since Linus and I got the grounding of the century from my parents for hotwiring the teacher’s car and moving it to the strip club parking lot. We even called a local news tip hotline to report the car’s whereabouts just for good measure. Like Mr. Morris didn’t have that coming. He was our Chemistry teacher who referred to Linus strictly as “chemo kid” and even chuckled at the nickname. He had wiry gold caps on his browned teeth and cigarette stains on his fingertips that were so filthy, I didn’t like touching the papers he graded. When Linus had to run out of class to throw up during a test, Mr. Morris failed him, even with the doctor’s note. I usually don’t retaliate, but you cross my brother, I go for blood. Our parents demanded to know why we hadn’t involved them, insisting they would have scheduled a conference with the principal.
We didn’t want a conference. Linus deserved Mr. Morris’s career on a silver platter. Maybe that’s overboard to some people. Really, we just did what a principal with a smackhole teacher on tenure couldn’t. Linus’s stellar defense to our parents’ tirade was that we wouldn’t have had to hotwire Mr. Morris’s car if his keys had just been in his jacket when I’d tried to pickpocket him earlier that morning. Linus had never been great at feigning contrition.
My cheeks reddened that Jens somehow knew about the third biggest fight our family ever had. “How do you know about that?”
“Ah!” His outburst of pain stayed my next argument. I rushed into the bathroom, knocking him in the rear with the door by accident.
I swear it was by accident.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, compassion tempering my rage. He held his head, rubbing the bloody spot on his left cheekbone. His fingers came away doused in red, so I sat him down on the edge of the tub and prodded his face with my fingertips to judge the depth of the two-inch-long cut. He flinched and batted at me like a child. Taking advantage of his seated position, I kept my fingers poised over the painful spot just in case I needed to convince him to behave. “This needs stitches. Like, needs them bad.”
“It’ll be fine.”
I looked at him, hoping to convey how idiotic I deemed his judgment. “No, it won’t. You need stitches now. Let me at least take you to the hospital.” Under his nose, my eye caught on a shimmer of purple glitter. It was nowhere else on his body, just a few pinpricks to distract me.
“No hospitals. Just give me a Band-Aid or something and let’s run.”
I shook my head and reached for the first aid kit under the sink. Thanks for this at-home lesson, Dad. We’ll see how well I was paying attention.
I ran to the kitchen and heated the needle at the stove, ignoring Jens calling from the bathroom that we were down to three minutes. “Would you shut up?” I yelled back. When I reentered the bathroom, his cheek was all bloody again, despite him having rinsed it twice. His aggravation at me was not as adamant, which was the first time I saw blood loss as a positive thing. “Close your eyes,” I ordered, wishing someone would let me close mine. When he jerked his chin away petulantly, I yanked it back, aiming the diluted rubbing alcohol over his head. “Close your eyes or go blind.”
Okay, I’m not sure he would actually go blind from rubbing alcohol, but it accomplished my goal. He closed his eyes as I dribbled a bit of the clear liquid over his angular cheekbone. “It looks like the bear did you a solid and missed your face tattoo. Now, hold still.” I threaded the needle and exhaled what I hoped was the last of my nerves. With a shakier hand than I would’ve liked, I swallowed the girlish scream in my throat and gently wove the needle through his tanned skin.
Jens huffed. “Could you not make that face, doc? You’re scaring me.”
It was then I realized I had my horror movie expression on. I tucked that away, too, along with my revulsion. I was going to be a doctor someday, so I’d have to get used to this. I had no idea what I was doing, so I completed the task as fast as possible, with Jens hemming and hawing the entire time, commenting that we needed to leave.
“Really? Really? We need to leave? Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” I snapped. “I’m not exactly a pro at this! I’m doing the best I can!”
His badgering grew less insistent, which was a relief, until I saw his eyelids drooping.
“Hey!” I barked, tying off the knot and snipping the thread. His hands pushed through the air like weighted paws, finally landing on my hips. I brought his head to rest on my chest and held it steady, permitting him a few balancing breaths. “It’s okay. You’re all done.”
Instead of a bratty quip, he held tighter to my waist. This was how I found myself participating in the bizarre, yet still tender, hug with the half-naked stranger. When my irritability finally broke, I held him tighter around the neck, not sure how to make sense of a bear attack that was almost fatal.
Jens smelled like sugar cookies. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from a girly body spray or from his actual skin, but it made my mouth water, despite the situation.
When it dawned on both of us that we were of the opposite sex, Jens loosened his grip on me. I lowered myself slightly and tapped him under the chin so I could look him directly in the eye
. “Look, thanks for the save. I don’t know why there was a bear or how you escaped, but thanks.” When he nodded once, I continued. “But I’m not leaving. This is my home, and I decide when I leave it. And I’m not going back out into the night with a stranger when I know for sure there’s a wild animal out there. I don’t care how much you yell. I’m not going.”
I ran my thumb across the space above his upper lip, brushing away the lavender shimmer I couldn’t make sense of. His intake of breath and wide eyes told me he had no idea he’d had glitter on his face.
I showed him the remnants. “Rave much?” I asked.
Jens touched his neck, tugging at the pouch that rested against his bare chest. “Wash your hands!” he demanded, trying to bolt upright, but not having the space to do so without knocking me over. He pointed to the sink. “Right now. I’m serious.”
“Sheesh! I was just going to.” I turned on the hottest water I could stand and scrubbed until the glitter and the blood smears were gone. I displayed my clean hands to him, and watched him deflate by a degree.
Slowly, without breaking eye contact, Jens raised himself up so that he once again towered over me. I’m a solid 5’7”, so I didn’t often feel dwarfed, but Jens was nearly a foot taller than me. I would have shuddered at his intimidating form, were he not clinging to me like a child seconds before.
Without a word, Jens slapped a bandage over the cut on his shoulder and exited the bathroom. I exhaled, relieved at my tiny victory. Now he would leave, and I could be alone to try to make sense of the night. I could ponder it all while I cleaned the macabre bathroom that had blood on the floor, the sink and streaking down the bathtub. I needed to find a way to quadruple-bolt the door shut, too.
Before I could make a solid plan for that, Jens pushed one of Danny’s old black shirts over his head and jerked me out of the bathroom. “That’s six minutes. You’re done.” He hefted me up over his good shoulder and marched out of my apartment with my green backpack and my messenger bag in his free hand. Though I screamed and flailed, he and the closed doors we passed paid me no mind.