This is probably my third attempt at writing this chapter, so I do hope you all like it. :-3 Enjoy!

P.S. I think I already told you guys what Kaytee's dad's name is but his name will appear several times in this chapter. This is just a head's up! :-3

Oh, and by the way, I'm back in school, so I will be rarely and randomly updating this fanfiction, but I do have a goal to finish this before this year is over. Unfortunately, school is my first priority and then comes everything else like drawing and writing… sorry.

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Chapter 12: Truth

"He's lucky he didn't drown when he fell in," a soft voice commented.

"What was he doing by a river in this weather?" Another person added, maintaining the same quiet tone.

Wakened by the voices, Jess felt himself slowly regaining control of his body, but he found he couldn't move much. Every limb of his ached painfully. He desperately wanted to open his eyes, but they felt so heavy, like somebody had attached weights to his eyelids to keep them from opening. Just as he got the feeling back in his arms and legs, Jess felt pain hit him like a bulldozer and he screamed out, alerting the people in the room.

"Is he alright?"

"Yes, he's fine. He just needs to be put on another dose of painkillers," somebody said, "much stronger pain killers."

"On it," another person said. There was a slight clatter in the background, before Jess felt something sharp prick his skin in several areas. It hurt a lot, but he felt too exhausted to protest and he blacked out soon after the needle pierced his skin.

It took a while for the painkillers to wear off, but when Jess woke up, he saw Kaytee sitting in the chair by his bed, asleep in the chair. She looked comfortable, dressed in some dry clothes that her father had probably brought her and it amazed him how she was able to find a comfortable sleeping position in that uncomfortable-looking chair. It annoyed Jess, because he wondered why the hospital couldn't have found something nicer for her to sit in.

Then again, she had been born into a family who all knew how to adapt to any situation life threw at them. Jess looked around, and found nobody else in the room. There wasn't even a doctor or nurse in sight and it worried him just a little bit. He wasn't sure if he was in stable condition yet, but he hoped that a doctor or a nurse would come in soon and let him know what had happened.

Jess turned his head and looked over at Kaytee. She was fast asleep, but he hoped he could wake her up. If he really put some effort into it, he could probably wake Kaytee up in one try, but Jess seriously doubted he could. Plus, he felt a little bad for waking Kaytee up, especially because she looked so peaceful sleeping in the chair by his bed.

"Kay…" he rasped, unable to speak. His throat felt scratchy and dry, but he had to wake her up. He needed answers. He needed to know how he had gotten into this hospital. Why wasn't he dead? He thought he had drowned in the river. He had seen Leslie.

"Kaytee…" He tried again, managing to say her name before his dry throat cut him off from saying anything else.

The redhead sleeping in the chair by his bed stirred, but she didn't wake up. Jess swallowed and tried to clear his throat so he could talk. He needed to wake Kaytee up, and he couldn't wait until she woke up on her own. He had questions that needed to be answered, and they needed to be answered right now.

"Kaytee, wake up…"

She didn't stir, but Jess wasn't giving up now. He was going to shake her awake if he absolutely had to, but the chances of getting out of bed looked pretty unlikely judging by how many needles were sticking out of his arm. Jess wanted answers, but he wasn't going to risk his health – which was probably not in the best condition right now – by doing anything stupid, which didn't leave him with a whole lot of options other than keep bugging Kaytee until she woke up. Even after he tugged on her arm with his free arm that wasn't tangled up around annoying wires and pesky needles, Kaytee didn't even move so much as an inch in response to anything Jess did, whether it was call her name or grab her hand and shake her the best he could without causing the needles to move or fall out.

Even though he felt really frustrated, Jess knew he had to give Kaytee some credit for her resilience. She could sleep through a monstrous hurricane if she wanted to.

"Kaytee," he called again, only much louder this time.

That seemed to do it. At the sound of his voice, Kaytee flinched in her seat and her eyelids flew open. For a second, she looked disoriented and was ready to go back to sleep but as soon as her eyes locked with his, she covered the distance between them in less than a second and wrapped her arms around him, careful to avoid the needles and wires surrounding him. Jess gasped out in surprise, this being the first time Kaytee had ever allowed any physical contact between them. He assumed that after Scott had put his hands on her, Kaytee didn't want to have any kind of close physical contact with anybody, except maybe her dad.

"We thought you weren't going to make it through!" Kaytee cried. "I thought I was too late!"

So that explains it…

"You saved me?" Jess whispered.

"Yeah," Kaytee whispered back. "I did. I pulled you out from the river, but I was worried you weren't going to make it…"

Kaytee pulled away from him and sat back in the chair, pulling her legs up to her chest.

"Dad found us a while after you went unconscious. Somehow he figured out that we were in the forest when we shouldn't have been but we're not in trouble."

"Why did you take me down there in the first place?"

Kaytee sighed and reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, a small thing really. When Jess saw the light shining dimly on her face, he was surprised it was still working, but then he realized that Kaytee had never fallen into the water like he had. It seemed that he was having the worst luck lately…

After surfing through the images on her phone for a few minutes, Kaytee finally turned the screen to Jess and showed him the image on the screen. Jess squinted to see the image against the bright light but once his eyes adjusted, his mouth dropped in horror. Jess glanced at Kaytee for a fraction of a second, before turning his attention back to the image on the tiny screen. If his vision wasn't playing tricks with him, he knew he was looking at a picture of the bridge he had built a few summers ago, now in a broken pile of wood that was damming up the river. Even though the small screen hid most of the damage, Jess was horrified.

"How did this happen?" He asked, almost to himself.

"I don't know. I wanted to show you, but you ended up, well, taking a dip in the river before I could show you."

Jess felt like slapping her. He glared daggers at Kaytee, but they didn't seem to be able to penetrate her seemingly impenetrable armor. He could see she was sorry just from the look in her eyes, and he didn't need her to say another word to him.

"I'm sorry this happened, Jess."

"It's okay. At least I'm not dead." Although I should be, he added silently.

After all, why did I see Leslie?

"Come on, Jess! Don't tell me you're not at least a little angry at me?"

"Why should I be? You didn't do anything. It's my fault I fell into the river in the first place."

"I know, but I could have just told you about the bridge!"

"Why didn't you?"

"I was worried you wouldn't believe me!"

Jess had to groan. "Kaytee, I trust you. I always have."

Before Kaytee could say anything in response to his words, the door opened and Kaytee's father entered.

"I heard somebody's awake." He grumbled.

"Hello, sir," Jess said, nodding his head to the man.

"Hey, Dad," Kaytee said.

"I heard you two got into a little trouble down by the river." Mr. Monroe said.

"Trouble is an understatement," Kaytee sighed.

"Mr. Monroe—"

"Please, call me Tex."

"It's short for Texas!" Kaytee whispered loudly to Jess.

Cool name…

Tex grabbed a chair sitting in the corner in the room and carried it over to where Kaytee sat by Jess's hospital bed and sat down. He looked stern, and it frightened Jess just a little bit.

"You understand that the bridge down by the river has collapsed, am I right?"

Jess nodded. He glanced at Kaytee, and saw her nod too, but she didn't look at him. Her eyes were fixed on her father, and so Jess turned his attention back to him as well. Tex reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of letters that were covered in grime and were tied together with a piece of rope. Jess's eyes widened.

"What are those?"

"Letters that Kaytee found in the attic when we moved in," Tex explained without looking at him. He began to fiddle with the rope, trying to release the letters from their bindings.

"There's no address," Tex added as he pulled out his switchblade and began to cut away at the ropes that kept the letters together. "It's almost as if they were supposed to be delivered, but whoever wrote them never got around to it."

After a good hard tug with his blade, the ropes finally broke, releasing the letters from their bindings. Tex handed the stack of letters over to Jess and stood up.

"The doctors say you'll be out of here by next Friday."

Jess's heart skipped a beat. Next Friday? That was almost a whole week! He couldn't be kept in the hospital for that long! There was no way he'd survive!

"The doctors want to make sure that you're under close watch for a few days and they'll decide where they'll go from there."

Jess nodded, but he felt disgruntled. Why, of all people, did this have to happen to him?

"I'll be back in a few hours to check on you two. Kaytee, here's a twenty so you can get some food if you're hungry." Tex said, handing the bill to his daughter.

"Thanks, Dad."

With a tip of his hat, Tex walked out of the hospital room, leaving Jess and Kaytee sitting there in silence with a medium-sized stack of letters scattered on the bed. Jess reached over and picked one up, but put it back down with the rest of the pile.

"I don't want to open them."

"I'll open it, then." Kaytee said, reaching for one of the letters.

"No, don't."

"Well, why not?"

Jess shook his head and began to gather the letters into a single pile. After managing to stack them all up into one neat pile, he placed them on the bedside table and lay down.

"Considering how much time I'm going to be spending in this room, I'll open them later so I have something to do."

"But you realize that there's something strange going on in the forest, right?" Kaytee looked anxious.

To the best of his ability, Jess nodded. "It's like the rope by the river," he murmured.

"Are you talking about the rope that was cut down? What about it?"

"Well, it wasn't cut down. When the girl who used to live in your house, her name was Leslie, tried to swing across the river to reach the other side of the riverbank using the rope, it broke under her weight."

Kaytee covered her mouth in horror, her eyes wide with terror.

"Oh, no…" she whispered.

"And she hit her head and drowned." Jess whispered.

Kaytee looked absolutely horrified. Her hands were clamped around her mouth and Jess could see tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Jess…" She whispered.

Jess smiled weakly at her, but it didn't reach his eyes. He was feeling just as grief-stricken and bitter as Kaytee, although it had already been three years since Leslie had passed away.

Then who is that girl I keep on seeing running through the forest?

"I didn't know…"

"Its okay, Kaytee," Jess said, but he felt sullen. He didn't want to tell her that it was his fault it had happened.

If only I had invited her to come with me to the museum…

And I'm stopping it there! I understand that it's been a while since I updated (I'm pretty sure I've already told you guys this story before billions of times) but I'm still getting reviews every now and then, so thank you so much for supporting me! I'd like to say that I've finally reached the half-way point for this story, so there will be at least ten more chapters before it is completely over with, but I'll see. Depending on where the wind takes me, the rest of the story might even be done in exactly ten chapters. Brace yourselves, folks, it's going to get interesting!

P.S. Just out of curiosity, how many of you thought Jess was dead just by the ending of the previous chapter?