AU where Jack and Kim used to be childhood friends.
Originally called Lost Time
Masks
Prologue:
She turns a corner, her blonde hair streaming behind. Her cheeks are red and rosy; sweat on her forehead glistens in the fading light. Waiting for the flow of cars to slow, she comes to stop at the crosswalk. She hits the button on the pole. An automated voice says, "Please wait." A white walking figure blinks onto the screen, and she doesn't think to check for cars. They have a red light, right? That means they'll be stopped, and she can cross. As she crosses the street, a mother sends a text asking her daughter how her basketball game went.
The brakes screech and then there's a bang.
There's a scream, a string of curses, and a girl too shocked to say anything. Her mind is racing. Am I dying? She lies on the pavement not moving a muscle. God, it hurts so much to breathe. She hates herself for deciding to run after school, but then she decides to hate Jack for annoying her at school which made her want to run after. And then with a sob, she realizes that her sixteenth birthday is in five days.
Her sixteenth birthday brings many things to her mind: a family trip to New York City, (her sweet sixteen gift) her learner's permit, and the three month mark before she opened the time capsule with Jack. She wasn't sure if she would open it with him. She wasn't friends with him anymore; maybe the past was best left buried.
She feels her body being lifted onto a stretcher and then in an ambulance. A bright light shines in her eyes, and she squints away from it. Blurry people mumble blurry things. Not knowing what they want her to say or do, she closes her eyes and tries to keep breathing. Her chest is tight and there's a sharp pain stopping her from breathing all the way in.
What did she tell Jack today? That they were "over"? But why...she missed being friends with him. How could she not forgive him…for doing something so childish? Her boyfriend did worse and she took him back… If she- if- if she doesn't die, she promises herself now that she'll make things right with him. She's gasping for air now, the thought of not putting The Wiggles vhs tape, his favorite thing to watch when he was five, in the capsule, seems to have sucked her lungs dry of air. I should have put it in. You put Winnie the Pooh in for me… She can't move, her eyes won't open, and she understands that she won't move again. I was hopelessly in love with you, Jack, and I couldn't even think to put in your favorite video.
One more shuddering breath. In through her nose and out her mouth. The air manipulating her vocal chords to form a whispered, "I'm sorry."
There's a weight in the bottom of my stomach. I can feel the tension as I walk into the kitchen. My parents are quiet and avoid my eyes. I fidget with the sleeve of my shirt nervously. "So…" I prompt them.
"Sit down, Jack," my mom whispers in a hoarse voice. I look at her swollen red eyes doubtfully.
"Why?" She rubs her face with a trembling hand, and I imagine another weight being added to my stomach. I bite my lip and take a seat.
A heavy silence fills the air between us and then my dad clears his throat. "There was an accident," he says. "A runner was hit by a car." They look at me carefully to see my reaction. I surprise them when I start laughing.
"That's what this is about?" I ask quizzically. The weights start to disintegrate as relief hits me. "It's not the first time someone's been hit by a car. And, like, I know that's bad and all, but if we're gonna do this every time there's an accident–"
"Jack," my dad interrupts. "You don't understand. Kim was the one running."
"…But she's fine, right?" I ask, meeting his eyes. Lots of people get hit by cars and are okay. This wouldn't happen to me. He sighs and lowers his gaze. Panic rises in my chest. Kim's fine. She's just trying to get back at me. But I know it's not true. I can see it in my parents' reactions; the way they're holding themselves, how they're watching me carefully, how they don't want to say it.
"She died on the way to the hospital," my mom confesses. I suddenly stand up. It feels as if all the oxygen in my lungs has been sucked up. I feel cramped, and I just want to get away from my parents. "Where are you going?" Her eyes are full of worry as I make my escape.
"I have homework to do," I say lamely.
She's about to respond when my dad beats her. "Are you okay? You two were really close…"
"Fine. We haven't been friends for awhile anyway." I force myself to smile to prove my point, and fly up the stairs to my bedroom. I pull out a math worksheet, eager for a distraction.
"I'm not doing it," Kim said defiantly. "It was your idea anyway." She backed away from her open window.
"It's not my fault you were stupid enough to accept my dare," I said.
"But it was your idea so you should go get it," Kim repeated.
I peered over the window ledge at the roof below. It looked like a very long way down from her window, and the hockey stick was lying close to the edge where the roof hovered over the cement steps to her house. "No! You threw it, so you go get it."
"If I get the stupid hockey stick, and my mom sees me on the roof, I'll get in more trouble than you. She can't ground you," she nagged.
"You're taller."
"You're not scared of heights."
"Okay, fine! I'll get it, but…" I paused trying to think. "You owe me," I finally said. She smiled, and I pulled myself through the window, carefully lowering myself to the shingles. I looked around at her yard and all the other houses. It was weird seeing them from up here. I glanced back at Kim, grinning, but her face had become pale, and she seemed regretful.
"Be careful, Jack," she murmured.
"Lighten up, Kimmy. I'll be fine." I carefully walked to the hockey stick, and as I got closer to the edge, I felt my stomach rising. It was really high up…. I picked up the hockey stick and handed it to Kim through the window. Then I pulled myself back through and fell onto her carpet. White-faced, she ran out of her room, and I heard her place it in her brothers' room- where we had ordinarily stolen it from. When she came back inside, I had pulled myself to a sitting position, and we locked eyes. We burst out laughing, relieved that we hadn't been caught.
The next day I'm picking at a piece of moss that's on a giant rock I'm sitting on. It feels like I'm in the middle of nowhere, although if it was dark, you could see lights from houses only a few meters away. When Kim and I were little, the forest was huge, surrounding our small fort and this giant rock. Now you can see townhouses through the thin trees. It's just like how it was an adventure to climb to the top of this rock, but it's barely even six feet tall.
The air around me starts to get colder, and I realize that the sun has begun to set. I sigh, wishing I could stay out here longer. I know if I don't go home now, my mother will start to worry even more, and it already feels like she's suffocating me. No matter how many times I tell her that I'm all right, she won't leave me alone. Before I leave, my eyes land on a spot underneath the rock. I know what's hidden underneath the soil, and as tempting as it is to uncover it, I force myself to leave it there. I'll get it when I turn sixteen.
"Jack! Where are you?" Kim shouted, her voice echoing throughout the woods.
"I can't tell you!" I yelled back. I was crouched behind a tree, stifling a laugh as she walked by my hiding spot again.
"This isn't fun anymore," she whined. An idea forms in my mind, and I quietly creeped around the tree. Dodging branches and leaves that look especially crunchy, I sneaked up behind Kim.
"Boo!" I grabbed her shoulders, and she let out a shriek. "Scared you," I teased. In response, she lturned around and punched my shoulder.
"I'm gonna get you back," Kim warned.
"Gotta catch me to kill me," I teased.
before sprinting away from her. As I was running through the forest, I tripped over a root, and landing face first in the dirt. "Ow," I groaned.
"Got you!" Kim yelled in my ear.
"Look, Kim" I said, pointing at a plastic container peeking out of the earth. I pulled myself up and grabbed the container. We climbed to the top of the rock and opened it. Inside were a bunch of pictures of friends together. There were letters, lists of books and music, baseball cards, and video tapes. There was a piece of tape that had faded writing on it that neither of us could read. "We should make one, too," I said. Kim agreed and the rest of the day was spent running around the neighborhood finding things to add to our time capsule.
"When do we open it?" I asked.
"I don't know. When do you think we should?"
"How about when we're sixteen?"
Kim nodded and said, "When we're sixteen, we'll meet here, and take this out. No matter what, deal?"
"Deal."
I find myself doing the math as I walk back home. If today was May twenty-fourth, then I had three months, and four days until my sixteenth birthday; hers would be in four days. I could wait to dig up our time capsule. Even though we stopped being friends, I still want to respect the memories we shared from our early childhood.
The months pass in a blur. For the most part, I didn't think about Kim. There were a few times when it hit me suddenly that she was gone. I don't know why some days it was worse than others when it had been years since I'd given our friendship a thought. Maybe it was because I knew she was okay, but now I know I'll never see her again.
Before my dad gets home from work and we have to open gifts, I trade my stuffy house for the woods. I'm at the rock again, staring at a spot on the ground. I brought a shovel with me, and even though I've been looking forward to finding what kind of weird stuff my younger self had buried, I'm anxious to uncover it.
I grit my teeth and slice through the soil with the shovel. It wasn't buried very deep, and in no time, my shovel hits the capsule. On my hands and knees, I sweep the dirt away and hold it up triumphantly. Just like when we found the other time capsule, I sit on the rock, and open it up.
There's a CD with our favorite music; pictures of our families; pictures of us together; a few quarters and nickels; a fizzy drink that she opened after shaking, not realizing that it was carbonated; a tape of Winnie the Pooh, her favorite show to watch; a stack of index cards with 52 reasons why we're best friends; a Christmas gift I made her that showed our special handshake; a piece of paper that included random words that used to be inside jokes. I'm saddened by the fact that I can't remember what they mean. I know that when we wrote them down, we always assumed that we'd be able to recall the memories. I look through index cards with a smile as I remember when I climbed onto her roof to get a hockey stick, or all the times we made our special milkshakes. If there are 52 reasons why we're best friends, then what happened? I frown, trying to think back to the last time we were friends.
"Why would you do that!" Kim cried, large tears brimmed her eyes.
"I didn't! He guessed it!" I yelled back.
Her eyes narrowed. "Because you told him!"
"Kim-" I tried to interrupt, but she kept talking.
"I told you not to tell anyone -especially Jerry- that I liked him, and then you go and tell him right after!"
"It was an accident! We were just talking and I told him that I knew someone who liked him. He kept asking, but I wouldn't tell him. He figured it out 'cause we're friends." She glared at me through her glassy eyes; my eyebrows knit together with anger.
"But why would you even say start talking about it?" She demanded. Her lower lip stuck out as she clenched her jaw, waiting for my response.
My eyes dropped to the floor. "I didn't mean to, okay?" I fumed. "You don't have to be such a cry baby!"
"At least I'm not a tattle-tale!"
"You see that door? I want you to be on the other side of it!" I snapped.
Her mouth opens with another cutting retort but she closes it after a thought. Not a second after she yelled, "Fine!" She flared her nostrils and spun on her heel, stalking out of the room. And then through the door she screamed, "I hope you die!"
If I had apologized, we'd be opening this time capsule together and sharing jokes. My throat closes up and my chest feels tight. I miss her. She never knew the real reason I told Jerry that she liked him.
Algebra II was excruciatingly boring, so I decided to take a few slacker laps around the school and then go back to class. I was passing the doors to the cafeteria when they suddenly flew open and almost hit me. A girl turned sharply without looking and ran into me. Instinctively, I reached out and grabbed her arm to stop her from falling.
"Sorry, sorry," she kept muttering.
"It's fine," I said back, having recognized her voice. Hearing mine, she glanced up quickly and I could see hurt and anger flood her face. I grinned at her. "Hey, Kim! Long time no talk."
"Bye, Jack," she snapped. Kim stepped around me trying to pass, but I stepped in front to block her way.
"What happened to your shirt?" I asked.
"None of your business." She kept glaring at me, and it was pretty intimidating, but it was fun to annoy her… And okay, I missed being friends.
"Kim, what happened?" I repeated in a softer voice. She sighed in annoyance.
"Someone wasn't looking where they were going and spilled their lunch on me."
"Like how you just crashed into me?"
"I'm leaving now." She shoved her shoulder into me, making me move and stalked off.
"Ohhh, Ki-im!" I shouted as I caught up to her. I marched along beside her and said, "So guess what."
She stopped and looked at me with so much contemptment that I actually took a couple steps back. "What do you want, Jack!" she yelled. "I'm having a really shitty day, and you are not helping. Why won't you fucking leave me alone!" I glanced around hoping there weren't any teachers; thank God there weren't. There were tears in her eyes and I didn't realize how bad I screwed up. I felt terrible.
"I didn't mean to upset you, Kim," I said. "Really. I just… I missed being friends, okay? I was hoping we could make up before we turned sixteen and opened the time capsule."
She scoffed. "We can't be friends again, Jack. You ruined that. Open the time capsule by yourself."
"Then what can I do to fix it?" I ran a hand through my hair. "There must be something."
"That's where you and I are different," she said. She looked sad, which made me a little hopeful that there could be something to mend our friendship. "I can forgive strangers. I don't know them. There's no level of trust, no relationship being violated. It's friends like you I have a hard time with. I trusted you. I knew you. We told each other everything. And you purposefully exploited me. That's the person I have a problem with. That's the person I can't forgive. You and I? We're done."
I could hardly breathe then. "Kim…" I didn't know what to say. That I was a stupid kid? I just gaped at her until I stuttered, "I have to get back to math."
That was the last day I saw her, that anyone saw her. My mind is plagued by questions, and I wish I just left the capsule alone. Why did she have to go for that stupid run? Was she thinking about how stupidly our friendship ended? Did she wish that we made up like I do now? Or did it happen so fast that she didn't even realize she was dying?
I never gave her death much thought in May; now it's all I can think about. I wish I'd just apologized because I'm asking myself if things would have been different. If we were friends still, maybe she wouldn't have gone running and then she would still be here. We could be looking through our time capsule together. I only ever told Jerry that Kim like him because I thought I'd get her to like me. I had such a big crush on her when we were growing up, and I was too scared to tell her. In high school, I realized I was in love with her. She was my first love, and I never had the chance to tell her.
"I'm sorry," I whisper and the wind carries my words through the trees.
Hey, so here's a short story I did for English class and thought it would make a could Jack/Kim one shot. It's a bit sad, and I've decided to dedicate it to someone at my school who recently died in a car accident leaving behind his brothers and friends. Don't drink and drive. Or anything distracting while you drive. Just pay attention and fucking drive. Your texts, calls, emails, Pokemon, etc. can wait. I'm not trying to be completely depressing, but the number of student deaths by vehicles is growing rapidly, and I thought it needs addressing.
If you have any ideas or AUs you want to see in writing drop a comment or send me a PM. I reallly need prompts! I'm also writing a sci-if story btw. I might post a little snip of it, so if you like my writing be on the lookout.
Thank you!
