c h a p t e r s i x .
Jude Evergreen
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"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T EVEN GO TO MY FUNERAL YOU JERK," she drove a playful fist into Roman's arm. She wasn't mad in actual fact, she wouldn't have gone to Roman's either. She wouldn't have been able to stomach it.
"Hey– I had more important things to do," the boy answered as he flicked the ashes of his cigarette away with practised ease, "like drinking away my sorrows."
"You really did miss me," Jude ruffled his hair, and in response, he grabbed her hand and threw it away with a grumble under his breath that wasn't quite intelligible.
Of course he missed her– she'd have to be blind not to see the troubled look in his eyes, the way he wouldn't look at her for too long, the way he would swallow sharply whenever she smiled at him. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for him and in that moment she hated herself for what she must have put him through. She knew that she would not have any luck in getting him to talk about it. Roman wasn't the type to open a wound unless it was to salt it.
"I did, I went" Peter raised his hand as though he were a student hanging out for that fat gold star. He was sprawled out on a hammock strung between two trees, shirtless, beer dangling from one hand. If anyone looked relaxed, it was Peter Rumancek, drinking and grinning in the warm, sticky early-morning air like none of this was even a little fucked up.
"I assume that's why you're in town?" she assumed.
"Well you're not that special. Vince kicked it too, Lynda and I moved in not long after you skipped."
"Yikes. Nothing says best family ever like making yourself at home in your dead uncle's house. I'll bet this is his beer too?" she asked as she took a swig of her drink.
"Probably," Peter replied with a shrug, clearly unbothered.
It was all in good fun, and it was easy to imagine that nothing at all had changed. It was all so weirdly normal, the three of them sitting there, passing beers back and forth like nothing had changed. For a moment, she could almost believe that it hadn't. Roman still sat perched like a king on his throne [otherwise known as the broken lawn chair], Peter sprawled out like the carefree guy he was. And Jude, somehow, in the middle of it all, laughing at Roman's sarcastic jabs and Peter's wild stories.
It was easy to forget about the darkness inhabiting the edges of the clearing. The way the trees seemed to lean in closer, as if listening. Easy to forget about the thing in the woods.
Since returning from the reserve trail, they decided it would be best for Jude to hide out at the Rumancek residence until they figured out just what the fuck was going on, because Peter had figured his mother would be the only woman with sense enough not to tell anyone. In the event that anyone else would be able to see her, she did not fancy waltzing in through the front door of her trailer park home and scaring the shit out of her poor old man.
The clock above the trailer door had ticked past four a.m, but none of them felt even close to tired. There was too much to think about, too much to process. They all suffered from the conclusion that Jude was not alive.
She could eat, drink, taste, feel but was not warm to the touch. She felt cold even while wrapped up in three blankets, and the ache in her bones seemed primordial like it had been there all along. Her skin was a pale ash-grey colour, her freckles faded and her red hair dull, the closing wounds beneath her skin a distant memory that never seemed to have happened.
The flickering yellow light above the trailer door snared her attention, and for a second, staring into the light took her someplace else.
She was naked when she woke.
Battered, dried blood caked onto her skin and ants poured over her body. She shook them off, shook the singular shackle around her ankle. The rusty metal clinked, loud– too loud in a forest filled with silence. The chain was rusted. Stiff. Heavy.
It was dark and she was lost.
The grass beneath her was dead and scratchy. The trees were wrong. Twisted, gnarled things that reached toward her with clawed branches. The wind around her played a haunting tone, and a nearby voice whistled a tune to a song she didn't like. Jude sat up and saw nothing but the night. Then she stood up. Then she walked.
"Earth to Judith–" Roman leaned over to snap his fingers in front of her face.
"What?"
"What do we do now?" he asked, looking her up and down as to take in her ghastly appearance. "What do you want to do now?"
"Mmm. Get shit-faced?"
"That's not what I mean, dumbass" he rolled his eyes.
"I don't know," she shrugged. "I guess....I guess we try to find some answers".
"Answers. Right. Sounds easy enough," Peter shrugged. "We get a lot of those around here."
For the next few days, like a dog begging for scraps, they waited for their answers. The first day- drink and sleep and dreams. The second day discussion about said dreams. Peter asked his psychic bitch-witch cousin Destiny who decided she didn't want anything to do with it. The third day consisted of weed and waiting. The fourth day; Jude was tired of this shit.
So Roman drove her to her house.
The trailer park was quieter than it had any right to be. The early morning sun filtered weakly through a hazy sky that hadn't woken up yet. She followed Roman along the cracked asphalt path. Grass wilted where she walked, shrivelling and scrambling back into weeds.
She did not have a heartbeat. She could not hear it drumming in her ears, could not feel the flutter in her chest that always used to make her feel sick. Breathing was a chore she no longer cared for.
She was still swamped in the oversized hoodie and sweatpants Peter had dug up for her, both of which hung off her thin frame. A stale smell was starting to cling to her, not of rot but more of dust, of something old and wrong, something that did not belong in this life. She wanted her old clothes, anything to bring her humanity back.
They looked through the windows of the beat-up trailer. They went to the back door. It creaked loudly as Roman eased it open. He slipped inside, motioning for her to follow.
It smelled the same as she remembered—beer, stale cigarette smoke.
They crept down the narrow hallway to her bedroom, Jude's bare feet making no sound on the worn particle board. The door was already ajar, and she hesitated before stepping inside.
The room was exactly as she'd left it. Clothes strewn across the floor, and posters of bands she didn't listen to anymore covered the walls. Her bed was unmade, the comforter bunched up at the foot like she'd only just climbed out of it.
An unexpected feeling began to crush her ribs. It felt like it would break her, the nostalgia and the sorrow of just how abruptly she had left this place. It was vacant and liminal, disturbing to come back to. A stark reminder that she had been here one moment and gone the next without a trace, how entering this space was like she had never left, yet it also felt like it had been years. It did not feel real but the cold was real and the grey skin was real and the bruises were real and the blood was real. It was real and suddenly she knew coming back here was an awful idea.
Roman nudged her shoulder, breaking the spell. "You want me to grab stuff, or—"
"I got it," she whispered briskly, moving to the dresser. Her fingers brushed the handle, but before she could open it, she heard the front door slam.
Roman grabbed her arm and pulled her inside the closet.
The smell of mothballs and old leather filled her nose as she pressed herself into the corner of the closet. Through the slats of the closet door, she saw her father stumble into the room, almost as if Jude's arrival at the home had summoned him from his usual stationary stupor on the couch.
Lance looked worse than she remembered. His dark hair was unkempt, face stubbly, his clothes rumpled and stained. He reeked of drink and vomit and sadness. He clutched a bottle of whisky like a lifeline in one hand, the other clutched a framed photo that he snatched off the desk. He swayed on his feet, muttering under his breath, his words slurred and broken.
She recognized the photo at once. It was one of her favourites—a picture of her and Lance at the lake, her arm slung around his shoulders, both of them grinning like idiots. She hadn't thought about that day in years. She hadn't thought about the fact that she would probably never get to have that again, and it made her feel sick.
Lance stared at the photo for a long moment before letting out a strangled sob. His grip tightened, and then he hurled it across the room as hard as he could. It collided with the wall and shattered, glass raining across the floor as he picked up another and threw it, another and threw it, another and threw it.
Jude flinched, her heart breaking as she watched him sink to his knees. He picked up another photo from her desk—a school picture this time, of when she had been a little girl with ginger braids and a toothy smile.
"Fuck you," he snarled. "Fuck you. You did this to me. You did this. You...you le..ft and you did this! Now fucking look at me!" he screamed at the frame as the glass splintered in his grip, his large hands bleeding. "Couldn't....couldn't keep a wife....couldn't keep my own kid alive....fuck! I'm sorry," he panted, curling in on himself. "I'm sorry."
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry too.
Jude pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. She wanted her dad like a desperate child, more than anything she needed him. She wanted to go to him, to collapse to the floor, to tell him she was right there, to hug him, but she couldn't. She wasn't his daughter anymore—not really. She was something else.
Her tears came faster now, her chest heaving. Roman's hand found hers in the dark, his grip steady and grounding. She clung to it, her nails curling into his skin as she fought to keep herself together.
The world was collapsing.
The false sense of security she'd built with Roman and Peter shattered. She couldn't drink and laugh and smoke her way out of this one. She couldn't sit around and wait for answers. She wasn't alive. She was dead. She wasn't supposed to be here. This wasn't right. This wasn't fair.
Lance staggered to his feet, his movements slow and heavy. He didn't bother picking up the broken glass or the fallen photos. He just shuffled out of the room, leaving the door open behind him, and then he tripped and fell and passed out in the hallway.
Neither of them talked as Roman tugged Jude's arm and guided her out the bedroom window.