When I came out of the bathroom, Dean was holding a gun, barrel pointed to the floor, and looking in the cylinder. His gaze narrowed onto me and he raised his eyebrows. "You touch this?" he asked me.
"No," I said. "I wouldn't know what to do with a gun if someone handed one to me."
"We'll have to fix that," Dean said, absently. He snapped the cylinder back into place and stored the gun in his bag. "Until we do, though, you stay away from our guns, got it?"
I shrugged and started picking my schoolbooks up. "Yeah, no problem." I shuddered. "Who needs a gun when you have fire at your beck and call?
"Hey," he said. "Don't use your fire as a weapon." I looked at him. His chin was tilted down and his eyebrows were up again.
I shrugged a second time. "Ok," I said, turning away from him. Whatever. If someone attacked me, I wasn't going to just sit there when I could easily protect myself.
Dean walked over to me and turned me back to face him. "I mean it, Jessie."
I jerked my shoulder out of his grasp. "I'm just supposed to let some guy kidnap and rape me when I could light his foot on fire and get away?"
Dean looked startled, and then his face hardened a little. "That's not what I mean. I don't want another death on your conscience, and Sam and I can take care of ourselves, so don't go using your fire as a weapon on anyone on our behalf, understand?"
I stared at him in disbelief. "Yeah, ok," I said sarcastically. "If someone is about to stab you, I won't light their hair on fire so that you don't die. That's makes complete sense."
"Don't get smart with me, little girl."
"Dean, don't you think that not doing something and letting you or Sam die is going to hurt me more?" I asked, completely serious and starting to get upset.
"We're not going to die," Dean said.
"Yes, you are. You're going to hell in less than a year, Dean. What the hell am I going to do then?" I crossed my arms in front of my chest and glared at him, holding back the despair in my stomach.
"You're going to go on living with Sam. He'll take just as good care of you as we do together, and he doesn't need your protection."
"It won't be the same!" I wailed. I couldn't help it; I burst into tears. Dean pulled me into his arms and held me until I stopped crying.
"It doesn't have to be the same, Jessie," Dean said, "as long as you're taken care of. Now finish packing so we can get going when Sam gets back." He met my eyes and I nodded. He let me go.
Sam was back ten minutes later and we packed up the car. An hour out of Maple Springs, we stopped at a diner for breakfast. After we ordered, Sam pulled out newspaper folded with an article outward and set it on the table in front of us.
"I think I found something," Sam said. "There have been some weird drowning deaths in Massachusetts. The victims are drowning on land."
"Let's check it out," Dean said. They started discussing the specifics of the case, going over what was in the newspaper. Sam said that he could do some research in it once we got in town. I tuned them out and fiddled with my fork, still thinking about what Dean had said in the motel room. He didn't want me to kill anyone else, didn't want that on my conscience, didn't trust me to be able to protect myself or them or control my own fire. Ok, he hadn't said that, but why else wouldn't they want my help. Being able to control fire was an important thing. Maybe if I just practiced it, just got better at it, I could be more useful. If I could direct the fire with more precision, then I could be sure that I set only the thing I was aiming at on fire.
I swung my feet under my seat and thought about it. I got to light a fire every night right now, to take the edge off. Maybe instead of just lighting the fire and burning it out of me, I could try to control it, direct it. Then I'd be more useful. Of course, it would take more time, but they'd never complained about the time I took, and I didn't think they'd mind if I had more control.
I stuck the fork into the paper placemat and started tearing holes. I wondered if maybe the problem was that he didn't want any more deaths on his conscience because he'd saved me and now he was taking care of me instead of hunting me like the parent-slaughtering monster I was. The waitress set a plate down in front of me, a chocolate chip pancake with a whipped cream smile. Sam nudged me. "Thank her," he whispered.
I looked up at the waitress and said, "Thanks." She nodded and wandered off. I scraped all of the whipped cream off the pancake, and then I picked all of the melted chocolate-soaked bits out of the pancake, eating them one by one. Dean looked at me, looked at Sam, and shrugged.
Sam frowned. "Use a fork," he suggested gently.
"No one cares if I use a fork," I replied. Sam looked confused and turned to Dean.
"What's wrong, sweetheart?" Dean asked.
"Nothing," I said angrily. "Everything is fine." Dean opened his mouth to say something else and a fire flared up in the kitchen. It called to me, but I ignored it, still picking out the chocolate bits of my pancake. People shouted and there was a commotion while the staff put it out. When I looked up, Sam and Dean were both looking at me.
I sighed, defeated. "I didn't do it," I said. "I had nothing to do with it. It's a diner. Grease fires happen." They looked relieved. I was suddenly over it and them and wanted to be alone.
I stood up. "I'm going to go wait in the car," I said.
Dean narrowed his eyes. "You barely touched your food."
I glanced at the now pock-marked destruction of the pancake face. "I'm not hungry. Can I have the keys?"
Dean handed me the keys. "I don't want to hear any complaints about how hungry you are in an hour," he warned. "And leave the radio off."
"Whatever," I said as I walked towards the door.
As I walked out the door, behind me I heard Sam ask Dean "What's wrong with her?"
It was a gorgeous day outside. It was cold enough that I needed a jacket, but the sun was shining. The sun made me feel a little better, and instead of getting into the car, I crawled onto the hood and lay in the sun. The metal beneath me was still warm from the engine and from the sun hitting the black paint. The heat soaked through my jacket. I started to relax.
The notification tone I had set for Dean went off in my pocket. I rolled over, dug the phone out of my pocket, and saw the message from Dean. "Get off the hood, get out of the sun or you will sunburn." Annoyed, I rolled off the hood, opened the car door and tossed my phone into the back seat as hard as I could. It bounced off the back of the seat and onto the floor under the driver's side front seat.
I got into the back seat, pulled out my Language Arts book, and started reading my next assignment, which was thankfully a story, so that Sam wouldn't start bitching at me too. The last thing I needed right now was more annoyance and a good story seemed like a good distraction. The story I was reading was called "All Summer in a Day" and it soon consumed me. I only barely noticed Sam and Dean getting into the car.
Dean handed a bag back to me. I stopped reading long enough to take it from him. "It's biscuits for when you get hungry later," Dean said uncomfortably. Warmth suffused me.
"Thanks, Dean," I said, meaning it. I set the bag of biscuits on the floor and went back to reading, suddenly in a much better mood.
We drove all day, stopping for food, gas, and bathroom breaks along the way. I read some more, did some assignments that Sam insisted I do, and played on the Game Boy. I was starting to know all of Dean's music by heart. Sitting with my back to the passenger's side door and my knees to my chest, I watched the sun go down through the trees by the side of the highway, the sunlight flashing through the trees branches like a beacon until the sun was below the tree line and I couldn't see it any longer. I missed it.
I lay down on the seat and stared out the window at the darkening sky, scattered clouds floating in front of the stars, blocking out the constellations. My dad had taught me all of the ones he knew when I was eight and we'd gone on an overnight hike in the Smokies, but I only remembered two of them now. I wondered if Sam or Dean could show them to me again. I watched the stars and thought of my dad. Tall, dark-haired, bearded, he smelled of pipe smoke and Polo cologne and laughed often and long.
The street was dark and the stars were close to me. I turned to see my dad setting up a badminton net in the front yard, the rackets and birdie sitting on the front stoop. My mom leaned out the front window and asked if he wanted a beer. Dad was using a hammer to pound the pole into the ground and he said "Sure." I looked up to see the roof on fire, the room behind my mom on fire.
I yelled "Mom, get out!" and went to run into the house, but when I opened the front door, flame flowed towards me in streams, like water, like oil. It came to me, it called to me. "What's wrong, Jessie?" my dad asked, setting a hand on my shoulder. I turned to look at him, and he was on fire, burning to bits before my eyes. "Dad!" I screamed. "No! Dad!" I tried to pull the fire back into me, but it wouldn't come because I was full. I couldn't save them. I turned to run and the neighborhood was an inferno, but none of it touched me. Me, it loved. Me, it wouldn't hurt. It sang my name as the houses burned and people died screaming.
My eyes flew open and I sat up. The car was dark, quiet. We were still driving down the road at a nice clip, Sam and Dean both lost in their own thoughts. I slid so that my back was again pressed to the passenger side door and pulled my knees back up to my chest. I cried quietly so Sam and Dean wouldn't know.
About ten minutes later, Dean asked Sam if Sam had something to tell him. I listened with wide eyes as Sam admitted, with some prompting, that he had taken the Colt the previous night and shot the Crossroads Demon in an effort to save Dean. He was unrepentant. I had no idea how he managed to stand up to Dean like that, but then Dean couldn't exactly spank Sam. It would be funny to see him try, though. They yelled at each other until they were finished, with no real resolution to the fight. I was starting to get used to that.
A half an hour later, we pulled into the yard of an abandoned-looking house and parked in the back yard. Dean turned off the car.
"Stay here until we come get you, Jessie," Dean said. The two of them got out of the car and checked over the house. Dean came back a few minutes later.
"Ok, get your stuff and come on."
Confused, I picked up my backpack, got out of the car, and followed him to the trunk. "We're staying here?"
"Yes."
"It's not a motel," I said.
"This is the coast of Massachusetts," Dean said, pulling our bags out of the trunk. "There are no cheap motels."
I picked up my other backpack. "But, this isn't our house."
"Nope," Dean said. "It's abandoned. We're borrowing it for a few days." He shut the trunk and headed towards the house. I followed along, hurrying to keep up.
"Is that legal?" I asked.
"Not even a little," Dean said. We went inside. The place was a wreck. It smelled like mold and mildew and dirt. Broken furniture was all over the place. There was no electricity.
I was horrified. "What, how…" I stuttered. I crossed my arms in front of my chest, not wanting to touch anything. Sam came down the stairs.
"Three rooms upstairs," he said. "Rock paper scissors for the mattress?" Dean shrugged and set down the bags. Dean lost and Sam got the room with the mattress.
"I'm not sleeping in here," I said. "I'll sleep in the Impala."
"You will not. You'll sleep in one of the rooms upstairs," Dean said. "Come on."
"Dean, seriously. Spiders? Rats?" I said, cringing. "I can't stay here."
"You wanna be a hunter, right?" He took my hand and led me towards the stairs.
"Yeah," I said hesitantly as we climbed.
"Welcome to a hunter's life." He turned down the corridor and opened the doors to all the rooms. One of the rooms had a mattress. Another had an ancient, moldering crib in it. The third was pretty much empty.
"We're not going to shower while we're here?" I asked, moving down the hall to the bathroom at the end. The bathroom was dirty, but with dirt, not with… other things. I thought maybe I could handle that. At least the place had a bathroom.
"Oh, there's water. That we can turn on. All it takes is a wrench."
"Great," I said, inspecting the tub. Spiders had built webs in the corners at the ceilings. I shuddered.
"Come on, Jessie. I'll kill them for you. Let's get your fire burned off and get you settled in for the night."
I followed him back down the stairs where Sam was setting out candles that he'd retrieved from the Impala's trunk. "I turned the water on," Sam said.
"There's a fireplace," I said to Dean, excited. "I can set a fire in there."
"I don't think so," Dean said. "Who knows how long it's been since the chimney was cleaned out. Nope, outside you go. I saw an old woodpile back behind the place that you can burn."
Once I was at the woodpile and Dean had said it was ok, I tried to select specific logs in the woodpile to burn, but I couldn't seem to do it. I'd basically hit the log, but I'd also hit the area a foot around the log. It didn't seem to matter that the log was what I was aiming at, the diameter of my fire was about three feet. By the time I'd burned enough to make the pressure go down, I was frustrated. Dean could tell.
"What's wrong with you? Usually burning cheers you up," he said as we headed back towards the house.
That annoyed me further. Yeah, the thing that killed my parents made me happy, and people could tell. Not that I'd ever told them about the jolt of pleasure every time I lit a flame. "Nothing," I said. "Nothing is wrong with me. I'm fine."
I trudged up the back steps and went in the house. Sam had pulled an old table into the middle of the main room and set up a workspace for himself there. He'd also set my school backpack on the table near him and put a chair there for me. I had no idea why, but that pissed me off, too.
Sam looked up when I came in and noticed the look on my face. "Jessie, what's going on?"
I lost it. "Nothing is going on. I'm fine. I'll stay in your stupid, abandoned, illegal house and shower in a spider-infested hellhole, and I'll sleep in a room with a rotting crib and a gazillion bugs, and I'll just be happy about it because we at least have water, but no electricity, no internet access, and no refrigeration. Because that's how hunter's live. Not that I'm allowed to be a hunter."
I turned to go up the stairs, but Dean's hand fell on my shoulder. He turned me to face him. "Hey, lose the attitude," he said. "You forced us to let you live this life."
"Yeah, I can see I made a great decision," I snapped, "living with two outlaws in a broken down, filthy hovel. Best decision of my damned life, right after the one where I decided to kill my parents." I jerked my shoulder away from him, stomped up the stairs to the room I was staying in, there was no way I was calling it my room, and saw that Sam had laid out a bedroll for me, put the backpack with my clothes in it in the room, and moved the rotting crib out of the room. I suddenly felt really bad, really guilty.
I sighed and turned to go back down the hall, but Dean was already at the top of the stairs, his face thunderous. Sam was there a second later. "I'm sorry," I said without any preamble, my face crumpling. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm happy I'm with you guys. I'm sorry."
They looked at each other and then Sam stepped forward and took my arm, crouching down to look me in the eye. "Jessie, you have got to stop losing your temper and saying mean things. You understand me?" he asked gently. "Wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to apologize for saying those things because you'd never said them?"
I nodded, but then I couldn't help it and I started sobbing. Sam hugged me. "Ok, it's ok, honey," he said.
Dean went into my room and got my backpack. Sam stopped hugging me, and Dean took my hand and led me into the bathroom. He unzipped my backpack and handed me my toothbrush and toothpaste. While I brushed my teeth, he spent a few minutes in there with a rag, cleaning the spiders from the corners of the shower and tub.
"Ok?" he asked, motioning to the now spider-free tub area.
I nodded. "Thanks, Dean," I said.
"Shower, then bed. I'll go make sure your room is bug and rat free."
I sighed in relief. "Thanks, Dean" I said. He left the room, closing the door behind him.
Well, at least the water worked.
