Chapter 5: Chapter5

#Chapter5

---I felt like my heart was beating for the first time-02

After throwing up, Jake had no strength left in him to keep standing, and he fell on the floor, his knees hurting from the strong impact. His half-closed eyes stared at Jeremy who was rushing to clean up. /"Leave it. I can do it myself./"

Instead of saying anything, Jeremy simply glared at him and then chose to ignore him. After cleaning the floor, he sat next to Jake, both leaning against the cupboards. /"Did you sleep well?/"

Jake nodded. /"Mhmm./"

/"Are you hungry?/"

Jake shook his head.

/"You still have to eat something./"

/"I… I saw her last night./"

Thinking that Jake was talking about visiting his mother or even hallucinating her because of the drug’s effects, Jeremy didn’t think much of it. /"She is…/" he started to say, but Jake shook his head, before looking at Jeremy with the corner of his eyes, his lips curved in a faint smile.

/"I’m talking about the freshman./"

The sudden development of the events took Jeremy by surprise. His eyes widened, and he wasn’t sure what to say anymore.

/"She had cut her hair…/" Jake said. Then as if he was reminded of something, he chuckled. /"It still looked like a bird nest though./"

Hearing Jake laugh, Jeremy was startled stiff, his mouth hanging open. Now he was almost certain that it was him who had taken morphine and not Jake.

Jake… Jake was laughing? How… How is that... Is this for real?

/"Do you… Do you still like her?/" Jeremy asked.

He remembered that back then, before Mrs. Caley died, Jake had developed a crush on a new transfer freshman, all because of her messy hair, the constant sleepy look on her face and the fact that Jake had caught her trying to fix the broken drinking fountain near the library.

But after Mrs. Caley’s death, Jake took a heavy blow. He fell into depression, he couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep… even after taking a leave from school for a few months, his condition didn’t get any better, until Jake finally dropped out. He never saw that girl anymore…

Yet now… why now? Why the day of Clara Caley’s death anniversary? And why was Jake smiling and chuckling the next day? Usually, he wouldn’t even get off the bed after taking the pill the previous night…

Jake shook his head. /"No… that was two years ago…/"

Denying it, yet smiling while talking…

Suddenly, Jeremy was hit by a wisp of inspiration. Surely such things like coincidences don’t exist in real life. Jeremy was a firm believer that everything happened for a reason in this life.

/"Did you talk to her?/"

/"Mhmm./" Jake nodded.

Jeremy started to do the math in his head. Jake is twenty years old. Back then he had just turned eighteen, so the girl was sixteen, which means now she is eighteen… good. That’s good. Perfect.

/"What did you talk about?/"

/"Nothing much. I asked her for some water./" The sleep deprived and starved Jake, of course, found it completely unnecessary to mention the circumstances of their meeting.

On the other hand, Jeremy who was getting more excited the more Jake talked was almost on the verge of tears. He felt like after dealing with a math problem every day for two years, he finally found the solution. He found hope. Hallelujah!!!

/"Why don’t you go meet her again today?/"

The unaware Jake, who had absolutely no idea that Jeremy had already found a new treatment for his chronic depression, was dumbfounded when he heard this question. What /"meet her again/"? Is this guy asking him to break into Ryder’s house again? Why would he even do such a thing?

/"What for?/"

Controlling his excitement, Jeremy answered in a matter-of-fact tone. /"To thank her, of course./"

Jake stared at Jeremy as if he was growing a second head. /"It was just water… and I already thanked her yesterday./"

/"No, no. That won’t do. Act like you didn’t and use thanking her as an excuse to see her again./"

/"Why would I go see her again?/"

Upon hearing this, Jeremy couldn’t help himself and smacked the back of Jake’s head. /"Brat, who do you think I am? I know you better than myself. Don’t tell me you don’t want to see her again. I dare you to say it. Say it and see if I will beat you up or not./"

Jake bit his lip. He actually wanted to see Ryder again. Last night things happened in a haze. By the time he came to realize what was happening, it was already over. It has been quite a long time since he had any desire to do anything anyway. It was too easy to give in. As a result, Jake found himself nodding.

/"Great./" Jeremy clapped his hands loudly once, a wide smile spread on his face. /"Eat something and go to her./" Not even thinking of waiting for a reply from Jake, Jeremy stood up and grabbed the first edible thing he saw, that being a granola bar, and stuffed it in Jake’s mouth.

Just like that, Jake ended up being forcibly fed before getting kicked out of the house. Who knows what thoughts spun the clogs in Jeremy’s head for it was already late in the evening when he kicked Jake out of his own house. Where was Jake supposed to find Ryder at such a late hour? Even worse, he didn’t quite remember the way to Ryder’s house. As weird as it is, he could find it while almost high, but now that he was sober, he got lost twice.

By the time Jake finally arrived at her house, he didn’t have any expectations of meeting Ryder. After all, it was already midnight, and it’s not like he could call her outside or anything. Who was he anyway? To Ryder, he was just the creep from last night that broke into her backyard, cried, drank her water and left. Thinking of this, Jake wanted to go back. This was clearly a bad idea.

However, as he reached the house, he still walked around it until he could see the backyard.

Much to his surprise, the lights there were on. The quietness of the night was broken by music played on the phone while the owner of that phone hummed the lyrics while working on God knows what.

Jake felt like going back to the first time he saw Ryder. She was biting her lower lip, eyes focusing ahead, and he could tell just by her face that she was deep in thoughts making calculations and trying to come up with a solution. The only difference was that the girl was older now. Her hair was shorter, and she was holding a nail gun.

In front of her was something that resembled half a table and around her, all over the backyard, one could find everything starting from nails and a hammer to scraps of metal, a wooden statue of Medusa and tools of all kinds. Truly, a junkyard, but why did it remind him of his own room?

As Ryder plugged in the nail gun on her hand, taking advantage of the fact that the song that was playing just ended, Jake talked. /"What are you doing?/"

The voice scared Ryder shitless. A high-pitch squeal came from the bottom of her heart as she jumped back in fear. The nail gun fired a nail that firmly nailed down on the ground just two inches away from her foot. With her body trembling, Ryder turned to the direction the voice came from, wanting to aim the nail gun at that person but didn’t dare to in fear of accidentally killing him.

From her point of view, all she could see was a young man standing behind the fence that was around the backyard, his head resting on his crossed arms. His figure was hidden by the darkness since he was standing at the same spot from yesterday, the only spot where the light bulb didn’t work and this dumbo forgot to change it after what happened yesterday.

/"What are you doing here?/" Ryder’s voice shook as she asked. With swift moves, Ryder grabbed her phone and stopped the music. Her eyes glanced at the time. It was midnight. When the hell did it get so late?!

Her parents weren’t home. The same thing was for yesterday. She was home alone and had wanted to use this rare chance of more me-time to work on her projects in the backyard, the said projects being things she found interesting to make.

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