GROUNDHOGS AT TERABITHIA

or

KING OF TERABITHIA'S ROW

by

Mad Tom


CHAPTER 4

Other than the fact that the sun was lower but it was still relatively light, they had no perspective of how long they'd held each other before they finally both stopped shaking.

"So my parents had me cremated?" she spoke first.

"Do you really wanna hear this, Leslie?"

She nodded. "If this is so vivid to you, there has to be a reason for it. I don't know how I feel about being cremated."

"Yeah, they cremated you and they held the wake at your house the day after you drowned-- tomorrow!... Your Grandma Burke was there and told me that you'd told her so much about me..."

"Yeah, I have!"

"And Miss Edmonds was there, and Mrs. Myers... That's when your dad said, 'You know she loved you.' Then he hugged me." He sniffled and let a tear run down his cheek.

"My dad hugged you?" she managed a chuckle. "He's a really friendly guy, but he's not all that touchy-feely!"

"It was real, Leslie! Nobody but me remembers, but--"

"Hey, I believe you! The rope did break and the rock was there, exactly the way you said!"

Jesse continued the vivid details as an experience, not a dream, up to Monday at school when her desk had already been removed when the kids got there.

"You can tell me the rest later," she said, holding up her hand. "It is getting too creepy!" She glanced across the creek, which was much wider and deeper at this point, with the water not as fast or noisy." She pulled off her hoodie and set it on the ground, then reached down and untied her high-tops. "I need to go to the Castle. I guess now the only way into Terabithia is to wade or swim."

Jesse gasped. "Leslie, NO! Are you crazy? You're tempting fate!"

"We've beaten the Dark Master, Jess!" she announced loudly. She started unlacing and pulling off her high-tops, peeling off her socks and stuffing them inside. "It's time to show him who rules Terabithia!"

"This isn't make-believe now!"

"I know, Jess!" she nodded. Her voice was calmer and less childish. "It's like getting right back on a horse after you've been thrown. The water's a lot calmer here. Even though it's deeper and wider than up where the rope was, it's still not over our heads. And if anything happens to me, you'll be here to give me mouth-to-mouth, right?" she grinned, then gave him a quick kiss. "I started working up a sweat after that run anyway, and I need to cool off."

"We're gonna run around the rest of the afternoon with our clothes all wet until we get home?" He was desperate, looking for any reason with which to talk her out of it.

She smiled as she pulled her tie-dyed T-shirt over her head and then reached behind her back to unhook her training bra. "Who said anything about getting our clothes wet?"

He snapped his head away, feeling himself turning red. "Leslie!"

She laughed. "You can look at me, Jess! There's a few things you still don't know about me."

He turned his head back. By that time, she had stood up and slipped out of her jeans and underwear. She was still a growing preteen like himself, but she was beautiful, as beautiful as the girls and women in some of the paintings at the museum if not more so. In the tight quarters of the Aarons house, he and his parents and sisters couldn't avoid being in different degrees of undress in front each other, but he definitely didn't see Leslie the way he did his sisters.

"Well, first off," she continued, "I mean what I said about loving you, but my getting naked doesn't mean we're gonna start having sex or even getting to second base or anything like that any time soon. Not until we're way older. But in case you haven't noticed, my parents are like latter-day hippies. We're not nudists, but the only time we don't sleep naked is when we have company. When you and Miss Edmonds came to get me this morning, I didn't have anything on under my yellow robe." She smiled with a little blush. "You're still the first boy I've ever been naked in front of, not counting my dad and a couple of doctors, but I'm pretty comfortable with the idea, and I was gonna do this sooner or later this Spring or Summer."

She paused thoughtfully. "Besides, if it weren't for you, right now I'd be naked anyway. On a stainless steel table. Getting cut open by some strange doctors and morgue attendants trying to figure out what killed me. I'm not being a tease, but you've earned a look, Jess."

"That's what Eliza Dushku did on Tru Calling, by the way," Jesse laughed nervously. "She was a morgue attendant, and every episode a corpse would look at her, say 'Help me!' and the day would go on fast rewind to when she woke up and she had to figure out how to stop the person from dying."

"Oh, I see," she nodded. "Anyway, Jess," she smiled gently and lovingly, "you're my King and I'm your Queen, and you're my best friend and soul mate. If I can't run around naked in front of you, who can I run around naked in front of?" She pecked him on the cheek, but still near his lips.

He smiled but said nothing.

"So," she continued, "you can either stay here while I go across, which I know you don't want to do. Or you can run around the rest of the afternoon with your clothes all wet until we get home. Or you can get naked with me." She stepped toward the water. "I'd really rather you came across with me, clothed or naked, in case something does happen. I'm not that reckless. Not after the rope today. So have you got my back, Jess?"

"I do, and it's a very nice back!" he laughed, still red faced.

She plunged into the creek, disappeared below the surface a second, then stood back up and shook the water out of her hair. "WHOO! This is great!" By the time she turned around, he had stripped down as well. She looked him over with a smile, and then he jumped in beside her. The cold water was definitely a waker-upper. Jesse was wide awake, this was no dream, Leslie was alive, and the two of them had turned Terabithia into Eden.

The water came up to about their armpits. They stood there holding hands and looking up at the sunlight filtering through the broken clouds and forest canopy. A warm, gentle wind blew in their faces, rustling the leaves, and from a distance they could hear the various sets of wind chimes at the Castle, and more closely those at the old pickup-- the same ones he had thrown away in his rage.

"Okay," Leslie said. "We've tempted fate enough for now, and we still have to swim back. Let's go on."

They crossed over with a couple of kicks and strokes, then continued to hold hands after they climbed up on the Terabithia bank. The warm breeze was now cooler on their wet skin. "Now I'm a little chilly," Leslie said, "Good thing we brought the blanket and the towel over to the Castle."

"Well," he replied, "let's walk a little faster."

They tried, but being completely naked hindered their speed, both with the brush on their skin and rough ground on their feet. "We need to start going barefoot more to toughen our feet," she noted, "or carry our sneakers across."

"Well, once that tree falls over, we won't have to swim across," he noted. "It became a bridge. I took the wood from your yard and made planks and rails. Then I even took May Belle across it and crowned her a Princess of Terabithia."

"Aw, that's so sweet, Jess!"

"Dad told me it was a way of keeping you alive," he smiled, then watched her eyes water.

"Are you still going to do that, since I didn't really die?"

"If it's okay with you."

"Of course it's okay!" Leslie said. "It always would have been okay! I love May Belle! She's the closest I've ever come to having a little sister myself."

"Princess May Belle it is," Jesse nodded, then looked into her eyes. "But there will only ever be one Queen of Terabithia."

"Thank you." Leslie smiled back, squeezing his hand, then added, "And that doesn't mean we stop swimming across, just the two of us, every once in a while!"

"Fine with me!"

They reached the Castle. Jesse stood aside and gestured toward the rungs. "You first. That way I can break your fall if you slip."

She looked at him, flattered but also exasperated. "Jess, you can't protect me twenty-four/seven forever!"

"Maybe not, but after what I've been through, I'm sure as heckfire gonna try!"

"I've climbed this tree dozens of times without getting hurt!"

"And you also swung across the rope dozens of times without getting hurt. Leslie, please!" He almost started crying again and she could see it. He cleared his throat and said, "I hereby proclaim as the King of Terabithia that the King's first duty above all others is to protect the life of his Queen at all costs!"

She smiled, her eyes also misting. "Why, thank you, Your Majesty!" She lifted an imaginary skirt and curtseyed, then started up the rungs. As she got high enough for Jesse to start up after her, she laughed, lowered herself a step and then rumpled his hair with her foot. "Admit it, Jess! You're just doing this so you can keep looking up at my tush!"

He laughed and stroked her foot. "Hey! This whole running around naked thing was your idea!"

"But you love it!"

"Yeah! I do!"

They continued upward until Leslie reached the main floor of the Castle and pulled herself in, and Jesse followed. Leslie opened the trunk and found the one towel they'd kept there.

"Hey," she realized, "I'm not that wet anymore. Just my hair."

"Me too. I guess the wind kinda blow-dried us."

She ran the towel quickly over her whole body, then blotted her hair with it and handed it to Jesse. He noted it was still plenty dry enough for him to dry himself thoroughly.

"I'm still a little chillier than I thought I was gonna be," she said, pulling the blanket out of the trunk. She wrapped it around herself and sat down on the floor, drawing her legs back in a fetal position, then opened the blanket and patted the floor next to her through the blanket. "Just because I said no sex and no bad touching doesn't mean we can't snuggle up and cuddle," she smiled.

Jesse sat, put his arm around her waist and pulled his half of the blanket over him. He suddenly felt very tired, drained. Leslie, on the other hand, was high on life, breathing in the breeze, listening to it rustle the leaves and branches all around them, looking around out the different windows of the Castle. Somehow Jesse could tell that she wasn't seeing high, craggy snow-capped peaks with glaciers and waterfalls, only the plain old Virginia farmlands under broken clouds. But now they held the same sense of wonder for her as the illusions she had told him to open his mind to. And through her he was beginning to have the same sense of wonder at the ordinary.

She then pulled him closer to her and leaned her head on his shoulder. "Jess, why do you think things happened the way they did?"

"Because God sent me back in time to save you!"

"I believe that now," she smiled at him. "But I don't think that's the whole answer."

"Oh!" he managed a laugh. "Am I getting a grade on this, Miss Burke? This is the first time I've ever gotten a pop quiz while the teacher and I were bundled up naked in a blanket together!"

She laughed, then became serious again. "I started reading the Gospel a little here and there after Easter. Turns out my folks do have a Bible from somewhere with the rest of their other books, and they were all for my reading it for myself. God makes people dream things when He wants to tell them something. Like when He told the Three Wise Men not to report back to Herod after they visited the Baby Jesus. But most dreams are just short stories, like half hour comedies or one hour dramas. He gave you a whole seven-day miniseries!"

"Well, you're worth a seven day miniseries," he smiled.

"Thanks. But you're the one who went through everything, not me! I just walked home in the rain with you last night, had dinner with Mom and Dad, took a shower, read the Bible a little more and went to sleep. Then I dreamed about you and me entering Prince Terrian in a dog show and winning a prize, then I woke up this morning to you hugging me out of nowhere, and then saving my life a few hours later."

"Maybe I had to be shown a few more things than the average Wise Man! Like Bill Murray in the movie. I guess God gave me a long to-do list!"

"That's a good answer."

"Do I get an A, Miss Burke?"

"There are good answers and bad answers, Jess. Not right or wrong answers."

"I guess there's a difference."

"What I'm trying to figure out is why I'm the one whose life was saved and I didn't go through Groundhog Day or that TV show. You went through the same stuff that Bill Murray and Eliza Doolittle or whatever her name is went through. The only character I can compare myself to is Emily in Our Town.

"I've heard of it, but what's the story about?"

"It's a stage play. Set in a small town called Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, which is kinda like Lark Creek except it's not as spread out. Two of the main characters are Emily and George. They start out as kids living next door to each other," she smiled at him and squeezed his hand, "grow up and get married. Then at the beginning of the last act, Emily dies giving birth, but her spirit gets to re-live one day of her life. She picks her twelfth birthday, and by the time it's over she realizes how much of life she took for granted until it was too late, and how everyone does that."

"That's a lousy ending!" Jesse shook his head. "Just like my life until I saw you this morning."

She smiled and her eyebrows raised. "But Jess, I think that's the answer for both of us! It's as simple as that!" She kissed him, squeezed him tight, then threw off her half of the blanket and went to the doorway. She let it frame her beautiful form, raising her hands to the top corners of the frame.

"Hey, God!" she screamed joyfully. "I love you and I love your beautiful world! And I love the beautiful life you gave me and then spared today! And I love the wonderful person Jesse Oliver Aarons whom you've given me as my soul-mate and companion! And my rescuer! Thank you for everything!!!"

As if in response, the breeze picked up and rustled the leaves louder. Leslie breathed in the fresh air, breathed in several breaths, enjoying the air flowing all over her body. Then she yelled out again: "Hey, Dark Master! I'm still alive! We've beaten you! King Jesse and Queen Leslie rule Terabithia!"

And then the wind picked up some more and there was a long loud crackling of thunder! It came from the direction of the stream. Leslie squealed, then jumped back in the blanket with Jesse.

"What was that?" they asked each other simultaneously.

The wind calmed quickly. "I didn't see any lightning, did you?" Leslie asked.

Jesse shook his head. "It didn't even get darker or anything."

"But it was really loud!"

Jesse stepped out of the blanket. "We'd better check it out and be ready to get out of here." He waited before adding, "It's gonna be dark soon anyway. And we still rule Terabithia!" Leslie giggled at that.

He picked up the towel and tied it around his waist. "You should take the blanket and wear it. A noise that loud might have sent everybody running this way, you don't know who we're gonna run into." He paused, then added, "Your folks may be latter-day hippies, but my dad was a Marine sergeant before he met Momma."

Leslie looked around the inside of the Castle. She found a bungee cord, folded and draped the blanket around her in a way that made it actually resemble a queen's robe, and used the bungee cord as a belt so the blanket would stay on without her having to hold it.

"I'll go first," Jesse said as he stepped backwards down the rungs.

"So you can break my fall," Leslie smiled affectionately.

They held hands again as they started down toward the creek. After they had passed the old pickup, and the old crossover point where the rope had been came into view, it became obvious what the thunderlike noise had been: the old tree had fallen across a few feet upstream, just the way Jesse remembered it. He stared at it without expression, while Leslie looked at it with a sense of awe, her mouth hanging open. The rope breaking had been enough to convince her all along that Jesse's foreknowledge was more than a lucky guess or coincidence, but this sealed it for her.

"Well, we were here to hear it, so it did make a sound!" she laughed nervously. "This time around." She looked at the rough bark and splintery branch stumps on the tree trunk, then across and down the stream at the rope, still half in the water and snaking and swirling below the rock, which was barely visible through the underbrush only because she knew it was there. "Jess, there's no way I'm gonna try to walk across this thing barefoot!"

"Good answer!" he sighed with relief. "It won't be safe until I put in some planking. The first time I went across, before I did, May Belle followed me and almost fell in... or will almost fall in... or would have almost fallen in... or something like that!"

"I guess we wade back the way we came. I'll leave the blanket in the pickup and we'll take the towel across, you hold it up out of the water."

They backtracked to the pickup, where Leslie untied the bungee cord, slipped off the blanket and stashed them under the dashboard. They looked and listened to make sure there was no sign of any outsiders, then stepped toward the point where they had crossed the creek. Jesse unknotted the towel, rolled it up and held it high above his head as the two of them stepped, much more slowly and gently than on the way over, into the creek, with Leslie taking care to keep her head out of the water and her hair dry. The water was again bracingly cool and awakening. When they got across to where they had left their clothes, he let her dry off with the towel first.

After they were finished dressing, they started upstream for home, still holding hands. When they passed the point where the rope had been, she led him the couple of steps toward the bank. "Just a second, Jess."

She reached down and picked up the end of the rope with the two knots, then started pulling it in and coiling it up.

"Do you really want that thing?" Jesse asked with a slight grimace.

"Two reasons. One, you said your dad was a Marine. Did he ever take the gun off of someone who tried to kill him? Like a trophy?"

"Dad was never in a war. He was too young for Vietnam, was only in for a few years, got out long before the First Gulf War."

"Oh," Leslie nodded, then smiled. "Anyway, the second reason's more important." She wrapped the wet, frayed end of the rope around the rest of the coil and then held the whole thing up. "I want this as a reminder of what I'll owe you forever!" She gave him another tight hug and a kiss, and they both sniffled as they held each other.

They started out of the woods, continuing to hold hands. As they started walking along the fence of the cow pasture, Leslie saw that Jesse was still blinking very mistily. "Jess, what's wrong now?"

"Leslie, I still can't believe this is real! I woke up this morning thinking you'd been dead for a week and burned to ashes, then you come back to me and we spend the whole day together, reliving the day you were supposed to have died, and I stop you from dying. Then we say 'I love you' to each other and kiss for the first time. Then we actually swim and run around Terabithia naked together! It's too wonderful an experience! Either this is a dream, or I've died, too, and joined you in Heaven!"

"It's just as wonderful for me too, Jess! But I know I'm not dead!" She let go of his hand. "Hey, Jess?"

"Yes, Leslie?"

"If this is a dream or we're both dead and in Heaven," she grinned, "would this hurt?" She slapped him firmly on the butt, and as she did so, she realized that she'd stolen that line from one of the marathon of movies they'd seen in school last month. Probably the Disney movie about the mad scientist who accidentally used his shrinking machine on his own kids.

"Oww! Hey, watch it! That's what I landed on when the rope broke!"

"I rest my case!" she laughed.

"Leslie, that play Our Town. That girl Emma's still dead at the end, right?"

"Emily," she corrected him. "Depends on what version. She is in the original stage version. Hollywood gave it a happier ending though. Grandma Burke has this VHS tape of an old movie version that I watched with her once. I think it was William Holden who played George and Martha somebody who played Emily. The same playwright Thornton Wilder also wrote the screenplay, and kept it the same as the original except that at the end, Emily wakes up in the hospital after giving birth, and the whole dying and then reliving one more day thing was just a dream."

"So which version do you like better?"

She smiled at him. "Well, Jess, up until a couple of hours ago, I thought Thornton Wilder sold out to Hollywood. Now that I've looked death in the face, I think there wasn't any point in the stage version for Emily to learn what she did after it was too late for her."

"Good answer," he nodded. "But what if today was like the deal with Emily in the stage version? What if the reason I'm here with you is because you're living one more day over."

Leslie grimaced. "That's creeping me out! Even more than talking about Grandma and Miss Edmonds and Mrs. Myers and your folks all being at my wake, and my desk being removed! Jesse, do not talk like that! Please!"

"I'm sorry! I'm scared, Leslie! What if I wake up tomorrow and you're really still dead and today wasn't really real? I don't want today to end. I don't want to let you out of my sight!"

Leslie sighed. "Jesse, I think if I was dead and a ghost, I'd know it. Emily knew she was dead and why she was reliving one day, and I think I would too." She paused. "If anything, maybe it is Groundhog Day and you're gonna wake up every morning for the next few months with Miss Edmonds inviting you to the museum!"

"As long as we bring you along and you don't go to the rope by yourself every time, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world!"

"Tell you what, Jess! Why don't you have dinner and spend the night with me and my folks? You can stay in the guest bedroom and I promise you I'll be the first person you'll see in the morning!"

"You sure your folks won't mind?"

"Mom and Dad love you!" She hefted the coiled rope in her hand. "And they're gonna love you even more after I tell them what happened with you and me at the creek today."

Jesse looked at her with uncertainty.

"I don't mean the swimming and running around naked part!" she laughed.


Author's Notes:

This is the chapter where I step onto thin ice. No matter how tastefully I handle the way Leslie decides to swim across the creek and run around in Terebithia after her brush with death, and how much I minimize it, there are going to be some readers who are going to want to lynch me as a Dirty Old Man! However, not only can't you say I didn't warn you in the preface, but as I said, if a preteen boy and girl innocently swimming naked together is child porn, then Henry Bellamann wrote child porn that became a national bestseller and Ronald Reagan starred in the movie version of it (albeit neither Ronnie nor the actor who played his character as a preteen were involved in those scenes!).

I will even go so far as to maintain that given the circumstances of Leslie's parents being implied in the movie to be New Age latter-day hippies (and actual ex-hippies in the book!), her budding feelings for Jess, and the fact that in this fanfic Jesse has just saved her life, I think what she does is well within character. And she's both innocent and smart enough to know that she and Jesse have years to go before they even think seriously about sex. Anyone disagree? If enough people do, I may consider rewriting this chapter. I'm not afraid of feedback as long as it doesn't include nooses and death threats! I'm asking for feedback!

Thanks for the reviews so far. Keep 'em coming!