Better than the alternative, Jade tells him. Anyway, wouldn’t it be even crueler to let Letha just keep bouncing through her skippy-drippy unicorn daydream of a perfect world, not tell her about the shadow creeping in behind her?
“Hey,” she says, catching her hand on the backrest of the bench.
Letha’s eating from a baggie of baby carrots. Of course.
“Oh, good,” she says, and makes a motion that means she’s scooting over, but she’s already left room, would never have sat down in a way that didn’t invite company and conversation.
Jade takes her seat, tries to take a wind-reading to see if the harsh scent her hair’s still manufacturing is going to waft left or right.
Blame it on the coveralls. Blame it on work.
“Now we can shake hands,” Letha says, extending hers after wiping the idea of carrots from it.
Jade takes her hand, says, “Town reject, nice to meet you.”
Letha’s dimples suck in and she shakes her head no about that, sets her bag of carrots down on her other side, says, “Jade Daniels, the legend.”
Jade has to blink, look into her lap. At the leg suddenly so close to hers.
“Nice pants,” she says.
They’re the ones A Bay of Blood was wrapped in, the ones that were supposed to just be an excuse for making a delivery.
On Letha, rolled up to just under the knee like that, they’re cute and baggy, of course. On Letha, they’re killer.
“A friend gave them to me,” Letha says, patting the top of Jade’s hand. “And… I don’t mean this in… in any negative way either,” she adds. “Really it only casts a negative light on me, or where I’m from, how I’ve lived. But, if I don’t say it— you’re the first Native American I’ve ever known, I think.”
Jade breathes out, relaxes a touch. Somewhere in town behind them, there’s the regular thunk of an axe into wood, because, at this elevation, winter is always coming.
“Indian dude backed his tow truck down that pier right there once,” Jade says, proud.
“Relative of yours?” Letha asks, her tone glad to have elicited this reply.
Jade is studying the Umiak now. A umiak is an Inuit whaling boat, according to her phone’s dictionary. To better hunt the giant catfish that’s supposed to drift past the windows down in Drown Town, maybe.
“I got your letter, yes,” Letha says, signaling to Jade that the bullshit’s over.
Jade nods, is ready.
“I—” Letha starts, doesn’t know where to go, how to finish.
“Stacey Graves,” she finally gets out, batting her deer eyelashes. “That was the paper you wanted me to read, right?”
“All of them can save your life,” Jade mumbles.
“But that little girl,” Letha says. “What I’m—why is she so important, I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
“Because whoever’s doing this is probably dressing up like —”
“To you, I mean. I read your letter six times, standing by the mailbox. By the end I was crying.”
Jade has to press her lips together to keep from smiling like an idiot. If you cry writing it, maybe someone will cry reading it. It’s more than she could have hoped for, is all she was wishing for.
“That bargain bin in Idaho Falls…” Letha says, kind of shrugging with her voice.
Jade sneaks a look over at the carrots, can only see the top corner of the baggie. It’s open, meaning the carrots are drying out right now. Proofrock is killing them.
“I read between the lines, I mean,” Letha adds.
“Mr. Holmes makes us double-space,” Jade says, not following.
“To what you were really saying,” Letha says, her hand on top of Jade’s again. “And—it can’t be easy to ask for help, especially from a complete stranger. It’s really… it’s brave is what it is.”
Jade sneaks a look up, hoping that Letha’s face can decode this.
“When we first moved here, I didn’t know why,” Letha goes on. “It was my senior year, all my friends are back home—but I see now. I’m here for you, Jade.”
“In that I’m part of Proofrock and Terra Nova and Indian Lake,” Jade says. “Yeah. Final girls, they fight for everyone, and—”
Letha starts to reach a hand up Jade’s forearm to be even more consoling but Jade shifts away, unsure what’s happening here.
“I just wrote that because you have to know,” Jade tells her, the truth of that so obvious. “I can—if you’ll let me, I can walk you through everything that’s coming, I can—”