“Fine,” Meg says, and holds the door to the bathroom open.
Jade steps in, Meg of course not letting the door shut, and Jade makes a production of the complicated mechanics of her coveralls, pretty certain Meg is fully aware of what she said last week, about the window in this bathroom being rusted open.
But then the cowbell above the front door jangles and Lonnie’s trying to get his words out, is trying to tell someone, anyone, what he just saw out on the water, but he keeps sticking, can’t get it all the way out, and— Jade pulls the stall door closed, loudly runs the slide bolt home, and then every iota of her awareness is focused on the line of shadow she can see through the crack of space between the stall door and the stall. That line is the leading edge of the door Meg is holding open. And the sound is her toe tapping.
Both fade, the tapping first, turning into quick footsteps, then the shadow, slowly blurring as the door sighs in, so she can hustle up front, talk Lonnie down.
Jade zips up much faster than she unzipped, steps out, and is up and through the window before Meg’s even told Lonnie that the sheriff’s on it, that this is being handled, thank you.
It’s trees and trees behind the sheriff’s office.
Jade crashes through them holding her arms in front of her face, and wonders if that’s another part of why slashers are so into masks: to avoid scratches. Five minutes later, when she can’t hold it anymore, she has to step behind a tree, pop a squat. Because she wasn’t lying about needing to pee in the worst way.
Five minutes after that she’s standing on the shore over by Banner Tompkins’s, her right hand opening and closing. All the boats that could scramble are out on the lake where Mr.
Holmes went down, meaning… meaning what? Why do they still need to be out there? Jade’s heart sinks, then rises back into her throat, her eyebrows doing that stupid V thing she hates.
“No,” she says, a hundred seventh periods reeling through her head, “not him too, please, he’s not part of it,” and then claps her hand over her mouth when, just to make the nightmare complete, there’s a mewling sort of animalish creak over to her right, on shore.
Slowly, still holding her hand over her mouth, she cranks her head over.
It’s—it’s…
Jade can’t breathe anymore, maybe can’t breathe ever again.
It’s a shadow on four legs, tumbling after a shopping bag, a small shadow, a— Not a dog, not a cat.
Jade feels a smile spread across her face by degrees: it’s a bear cub.
It’s just playing.
Jade shakes her head, impressed with the world for knowing just how to give her a heart attack.
When the shopping bag snags on something in the gravel, the bear cub’s moving too fast, slides past, reaching back to try to bite it, its effort the cutest thing ever, pretty much. Even to a horror chick.
“Go,” Jade says to the little bear. “Go find your mom, snuggle up close. There’s a scary bear out there somewhere, the kind that eats little guys like you.”
The bear cub stills, having heard her voice, Jade guesses, and she starts to step out past the trees, maybe snap a picture of this, but then she stops herself.
She’s a fugitive now, isn’t she?
She steps back into the deeper shadows, feeling for dry branches before giving her foot any real weight.
She still has a good line on the lake, though. On the part of the lake she needs to be watching. One of the boats’ lights are just coming on, in anticipation of dusk, and Jade shakes her head no, runs through Idaho state history dates in her head, on the idea they can somehow help Mr. Holmes: Nez Perce in the north, Shoshone in the south; Lewis and Clark, 1805; Oregon Trail, 1846 through 1969—no, 18 69, shit; gold in the hills, 1860s; Henderson-Golding, 1869; Chief Joseph, 1877; becomes a state in 1890.
“I know them all, sir,” she whispers.
The lights out there just keep on, though, and none of the boats are buzzing back to Proofrock yet, and that can’t be good, can it? Keeping to the trees and watching for baby bears —for any thing, anyone—Jade slips through town, her lips pressed together in an attempt to keep her eyes from crying for Mr. Holmes.
Stupid idiot, she tells herself. Senior citizen high school teacher flying a sky go-cart just so he can smoke cigarettes his wife won’t know about? What the hell did he expect? Except she already knows the answer to that: to get away. And, yes, okay already, she does it with slashers a little just the same, so what. And for Hardy an airboat is what he uses to get away, isn’t it?