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Chapter Two
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"Jade, get back in the car."
"No."
"You don't know where you're going."
"Yes, Mother, I do."
"No, you don't. Get in the car."
"I'm walking."
"We're twenty miles out!"
"I have legs."
"Jade, I wanted to talk. That's why we drove all the way here together."
"Ha! Talk," Jade scoffs. "You didn't want to talk. You wanted to minimize your amount of guilt because you feel bad about shipping me off for the summer."
"You chose this—"
"I did not choose this! You think I would willingly leave my life back home to go live with some crazy bitch that even you can't stand?"
"It was this or summer school, Jade. You chose this."
"Oh, yes, summer school! Locked in a classroom all day with no chance of parole. What great choices those were. Thank you, Mother, for such freedom!"
Anna Lacey sighs tiredly. "Are you going to get back in the car or not?"
"Nope."
Anna pulls off her sunglasses from where they sit in her hair and moves them to cover her eyes again. "Fine. Have it your way." The exasperated mother rolls up her driver's seat window and gets back on the road, leaving her daughter still standing there.
Jade kicks around a few nearby rocks and lets out a loud groan. She looks up at the wide blue sky in front of her and catches site of the colorful, painted sign.
Welcome to IDAHO
Burley city center: 20 miles
"Fu'cking great."
When Anna pulls up to her mother's house, a place she hasn't seen in over ten years, she's surprised to see that it looks exactly the same as she remembers it. She quickly puts out her cigarette and pops in two breath mints—not that she doesn't know Georgia will be able to smell the stench anyways.
"Anna!" Georgia descends from the steps of her home and waves to her daughter. "You're here!"
"I'm here," the blonde replies shortly.
Georgia eyes her up and down and smiles. "You look nice. Where's my granddaughter?"
"She... She fled from the car."
"She did what?"
"Your granddaughter tends to bolt when she doesn't get her way. She's easy to find, though; just listen for a scream about as loud as a gunshot."
"She doesn't even know where she's going; the last time she was here, she was, what, ten?"
"Oh, she'll find her way. Jade is very resourceful." Georgia looks puzzled, but Anna speaks again before she can reply. "Who is that boy in your yard?"
The older woman turns around and spots her new employee (of sorts) watering the daisies in front of the house. "Oh, that's Beck. He's tending my land. You should meet him; he's real sweet." Anna is about to protest when Georgia calls the boy over to where they are. "Beck, this is my daughter, Anna."
"Nice to meet you, ma'am." He smiles charmingly and even Anna understands the appeal.
"No need to call this one ma'am," Georgia teases. "She's from California; she thinks ma'am makes her seem old—God forbid."
Anna ignores her. "Nice meeting you, Beck."
"Beck, would you mind getting Jade's things from the trunk and taking them inside?"
"Not at all," he answers, and moves to do so, leaving the women alone.
"Anyways," Anna says, "Jade should be here eventually. Call me if she doesn't show by tonight; I'll just turn back around."
"Anna?"
"Hmm?"
"Why did you drive all the way here?" Anna doesn't reply. "You could have put Jade on a plane here and avoided seeing me altogether. That's what I would have assumed you'd do."
The blonde sighs and leans tiredly against her silver Mercedes Benz. "I thought the drive would do us some good. I thought we could talk. Clearly, I was being naive. She hates me about as much as I hated you. Always has."
"Mhmm," Georgia nods. She won't say it now, but she knows that Anna's relationship problems with her own daughter are far from only Jade's fault. "Alright, well, I suppose I'll talk to you soon. Safe travels."
"Goodbye, Mother. Good luck with Jade."
"No worries on this end," Georgia reminds her. She watches Anna get back in her car and, without another word, drive back through the gates of the property. Georgia heads inside to make lemonade and lunch, and reminds Beck on her way in to keep a look out for her granddaughter.
Having found a patch of grass on the side of the dusty road, Jade is lying in it. Headphones in, sunglasses on, and eyes closed. It's only when someone taps her shoulder that she flies into a sitting up position and lets out an ear-piercing scream.
"What the fuck are you doing?" She yells to a very startled boy, who is now moving back with caution.
"Nothing, nothing! I'm sorry—I didn't mean to startle you. Are you... Are you Jade?"
Jade lifts her Burberry sunglasses to sit on her head. "How do you know who I am?"
"I'm Beck. It's kind of a long story, but your grandmother sent me looking for you. It'll be dark soon, and, well, we're about twenty miles from the town center."
"Yeah, I can read," she informs him, pointing lazily to the large sign in front of them. She tousles her long, black curls and throws her headphones back into her purse. Beck offers his hand to help her stand up, and then notice that she's left her cell phone laying in the grass.
"Your phone."
Jade looks to her side and picks up the iPhone. "Right. Yeah, my mother cut off my cell service." She throws it across the road, leaving it in the dirt. "She's a gem."
Beck raises his eyebrows, but lowers them before she can see his look of surprise. "Well, if you've got everything, I'd be happy to drive you back to your grandmother's."
"Of course you would be." He opens the passenger's side door of the red pick-up truck and Jade huffily gets in. "How do you know Georgia?" She asks after about ten minutes of silence.
Beck hesitates before settling on the easy answer. "I work for her. I take care of the land and the animals."
She doesn't reply, but simply drops her head back against the seat. She watches out the window as they enter the city center, in all its small town glory. For a girl from Los Angeles, she's pretty sure this is what's known as Hell on Earth.
When they pull onto the property, Jade lets out a long sigh and spots her the woman she hasn't seen in six years on the front porch. Her hand is over her forehead to block the sun from her eyes, and Jade can see her smile as Beck parks the truck.
"There she is," Georgia says contently.
Beck heads inside to wash his hands before dinner and to give the women some privacy. Jade, meanwhile, rests against the side of the truck and eyes her grandmother. "Well, you don't look evil."
Georgia shrugs. "Make-up helps." She keeps her blue eyes locked on Jade's matching ones. "Are you hungry? You're about five hours late."
"My mother threw me out of the car."
"I see."
"She might as well have, anyway. She's fucking crazy. I guess I'll find out where she gets it from."
"You're still the same Jade, huh? Very spunky."
"If that's what you want to call it."
Georgia smiles. "Dinner? I'm making chicken."
"Swell." Jade follows her inside, where her grandmother tells her that her bags are already in her room. "So my mom is gone?"
"Already on her way back to California, as usual."
"I knew she wouldn't last more than an hour in this godforsaken state," she mutters, and takes her place at the kitchen table. Three places are set, so she assumes Georgia's work boy is staying for dinner—and she realizes he's right when he comes trudging down the stairs. He looks cleaner already, she notes, with a fresh plaid shirt and his jeans. She also notices that he looks much younger this way, and he can't be much older than her.
The two of them sit down, saying nothing to each other, and Georgia serves three plates of chicken, grilled vegetables, and homemade mashed potatoes. "Jade, how was your drive here?" She asks her granddaughter.
"Fine. I could have taken a plane and skipped the bullshit, though."
"I'm just glad Beck was able to find you. Twenty miles is a long way by foot."
Beck has to remind himself that, yes, to a normal person, that sentence makes sense. Twenty miles on foot to him still feels like nothing. Old habits die hard, he guesses.
"Did you two get to talk at all?"
Jade doesn't answer, so Beck speaks up. "A bit," is the vague reply.
Georgia looks up at Jade, who's eyes are on the glass of water she's drinking. "Beck is working on the property for me, so he's staying here."
The sixteen-year-old promptly chokes on her drink, then, and sets it down quickly. "I'm sorry, what?"
"I'm sure you two will enjoy getting to know each other," Georgia says, ignoring her granddaughter's dramatic outbreak. "You're the same age, anyway."
"He's sleeping here? In this house?"
"You don't have to talk about him like he's not right here, Jade," the older woman chuckles. "But, yes, he is. All three of us, under one roof."
Jade doesn't say anything for the rest of dinner, instead choosing to finish her food and leave the conversation between Georgia and Beck. After a scalding hot shower, she opens her suitcases and stares at the sheer amount of things to unpack. Then again, she thinks, if she doesn't settle in, the fact that she has to spend an entire summer in Burley, Idaho won't seem as real.
What she does choose to unpack is her smaller suitcase—the one full of art supplies. Within thirty minutes, the desk in the room is covered in colored pencils, paintbrushes, canvases, paper, watercolors, and more. It's a mess, but she's never been one to care much about being organized.
Another thing she takes the liberty to unpack is her backpack, chalk full of books to entertain her during what's sure to be the most boring summer of her life. She'd brought fifteen with her. With nothing else to do, she could finish them all in less than a month—but she'd figured she could split her time between reading and painting and make them last for the entire three months. After finding places to hold all of her books, she tucks herself into bed.
She wakes the next morning at ten o'clock to the sound of a lawnmower buzzing outside. She sits up in bed and pushes her black sleeping mask, the one she hasn't been able to sleep without since middle school, up onto her forehead. "Ugh," she huffs, as the realization of where she is re-sinks in. She flops back onto her bed but, thanks to the annoying noises coming from outside her window, she knows she won't be able to fall back asleep.
When Jade goes into the kitchen, she sees Georgia sitting at the table, doing a crossword and drinking her jet black coffee. "You missed breakfast. We eat at nine."
"Oops," she retorts carelessly.
"I saved you some pancakes, it being your first morning here and all."
"How kind."
Georgia folds her arms across her chest. "Are you always this sarcastic?"
"I prefer to call it wit," she quips, as one side of her mouth curls upwards.
It's quiet for a few seconds, and then, "Your pancakes are in the fridge; you can heat them up in the microwave. Syrup's on the counter. I'm walking into town to do some grocery shopping and other errands. I'm assuming you don't want to join me?"
"You're not wrong."
Georgia gives a single nod to her granddaughter before grabbing her re-usable bags and her purse. "I'll be back in time to make lunch for all of us; I'll see you around noon," is the last thing she says before opening her two-parted door and shutting in behind her.
Jade sighs and, before fixing the pancakes for herself, decides she needs coffee. In her attempt to speak minimally to her grandmother, she'd completely forgotten to ask how to work the machine sitting on the counter. Compared to the Keurig she has back at home, this thing looks completely foreign to her. "I'm Jade," she tells herself, strapping her hands onto the counter as if to be at some kind of war with this machine. "I can figure this out."
Less than five minutes later, she lets out a loud groan and fights the urge to throw the pot across the room. "Goddammit!" She screams, after having failed a tenth (fifteenth) time. Before her pride can stop her, she storms outside and spots the work boy. He's mowing a different part of the lawn now, but he isn't facing her. She pauses: Shit, what was his name? ...Ben? Brett? It comes to her in a minute.
"Beck!" She yells from the porch. "Beck!"
For whatever reason, he's still mowing. Not stopping—not hearing her? Beck is his name, right? "Beck!" She screams again. He must have headphones in, goddammit.
Jade marches straight off of the steps and over to where the work boy is mowing, and promptly taps him hard on the back.
"Woah," he suddenly says, and when he pulls the headphones out of his ears Jade understands that at least he wasn't ignoring her. Beck powers off the lawnmower and turns around to see her. "Oh. Hey, Jade." He smiles and—Wow, was he this attractive yesterday. No, no—focus, Jade!
"I need coffee," she tells him blankly.
"There's a machine insi—"
"Yes, I'm fully aware. And it's sent from Satan."
He fights off a laugh. "You...want me to help you?"
"If you're not too busy, what with your decapitation of a million grass blades."
This time Beck doesn't hide his smile, because this girl is funny in a way he's never encountered before. "I think I can make some time," he tells her, and fixes the lawnmower so that it can stand on its own before following her into the kitchen. He stares at the (very basic) coffee maker on the counter in front of them, and then looks at her. "Have you never used a coffee maker before?"
Jade rolls her eyes. "I use a Keurig, the only machine that makes sense."
Beck knows what she's talking about; the prison he used to visit weekly with his mother to see his father had one of them. It was a fancy way to make coffee, he remembers, and surely nothing his parents would ever spend money on.
"Alright, well, this one's pretty easy." He walks her through the four simple steps necessary to start the machine, and by the time he's finished, Jade can smell the beginning of her cup of coffee being made.
"Thank god," she grumbles.
He smiles. "I'm going to get back to work. See you later, Jade."
By the time she realizes she should probably thank him, he's already out the door and she's missed her chance. Something, though, about the way he says her name was just enough to through her off her game. When her mother says it, it's in a yell. When her step-father says it, it's in a frustrated sigh. When anyone else says it, it's usually one of the two of those things.
Beck says it like honey. He says it sweetly, like he's happy to have the word on his tongue. He says it like he knows her—even though he doesn't—which she thinks should bother her, but it doesn't.
She likes how he says it.
That's the part that bothers her.
Two days later, Georgia is cleaning the table from the lunch she'd made for she, Beck, and Jade, when her granddaughter walks past with a book. "Oh, Jade," she calls out, stopping the girl in her tracks. Jade lets out a sigh and turns to face Georgia.
"Hmm?"
"I talked to Dr. Bradley Dunne, Burley's local veterinarian, at the market the other day, and he said his receptionist is leaving for summer vacation. He told me he'd be happy to have you take her place and work the front desk for these next few months."
Jade's blue eyes blaze as she glares at her grandmother. "I am not working."
Georgia doesn't seem fazed by the twist of attitude at all; her granddaughter has no idea that Anna was twice as worse as Jade. "You're sixteen. You're old enough to have a job; for Christ's sake, Beck is your age and he works nearly all day long, Monday through Friday. Your mother's agreement with me was that if you live here, you work."
"Oh, so my mother put you up to this."
"Jade—"
"It's as if the two of you are putting your hatred for each other aside to team up and make this the most miserable summer of my life. I'm not working."
"First of all, I don't hate your mother—"
"Save it," Jade snaps. "Don't wait for me for dinner!" She calls on her way out the door.
Georgia shakes her head as her front door slams behind her granddaughter. "Wouldn't even if you wanted me to," she mutters.
Beck, busy watering the front flowers, turns his attention to Jade, who is suddenly storming out towards the gate. She has a book in her hand and nothing else, so Beck's not sure where she plans on going, but she marches all the way off of the property.
He has to admit, the girl has a spirit.
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"It'll just be three days a week." A lady older than Georgia and with gray, curly hair, hands Jade her name tag-which the younger girl tosses in the trash can as soon as she can. "Amy comes Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Dr. Dunne doesn't work on the weekends unless there's an emergency."
"You should get here around nine. You can ask for your lunch break whenever you want it, and you're free to go by three."
"Awesome." Jade's voice is dripping with sarcasm, but the older woman, Maggie, interprets it as genuine.
Jade officially has a job—well, an easy, part-time job—and now her summer sucks even more than she'd initially thought it would.
On the second Monday since her arrival, after the table has long been cleared from dinner, Jade is laying on her bed sketching an idea for a new painting. She's stuck, deciding between two directions in which she could take the piece, so she sets her pencil down.
Though she won't admit it, Jade loves that the bed in her room has a window view. In Los Angeles, to be able to see the stars is nothing more than wishful thinking. Here, though, the sky is clear as a perfect picture. She can see every tiny twinkle, and the moon is close and big enough to shed some light through the window into her room.
As she stares at the window, she's flooded with memories from the last time she was here. Anna hadn't known that then-ten-year-old Jade had been sitting in the living room, reading a book, when she'd had the distressed phone conversation with Georgia. The older woman was complaining that she hadn't seen her granddaughter in four years, and the last time had only been because of her husband's funeral. Georgia demanded that Anna come to Idaho with Jade, or at least send Jade up to visit.
At the time, Jade barely knew her grandmother. She'd seen her a few times that she could remember, but one thing she knew for certain was that her mother couldn't stand the older woman. Jade never knew why. But, regardless of Anna's hatred, she put her ten-year-old daughter on a plane into the tiny Burley Municipal Airport, where Jade spent two weeks out of her summer with Georgia.
Never in her life could the fourth grader remember ever being in a place like Idaho. She had grown up in California, born and raised. She hadn't seen such a small town, where people owned so much land and everyone was so friendly (and nosy), ever in her short life. Georgia treated her like a princess; she made the best breakfasts every morning, bought Jade a bicycle to get around the town and property with, and allowed her to ride her favorite horse that her grandmother owned.
God, she loved that horse.
She'd never even seen a real one before, so the sheer size of animal was enough to startle her. Georgia owned four horses, but Jade had her eye on one of them from the very beginning. She was a Bay horse, with a chocolate coat of body hair and jet black mane and tail. Her name was Charisma—and Jade was obsessed with her.
"This one's a bit difficult," Georgia had informed her granddaughter as Jade ran her hand through the horse's mane. "She'll take off if you let her, so I've always got to be careful with keeping her inside the pen. She's my prettiest one, though," she added with a wink. Jade hadn't cared that Charisma was typically terribly behaved; she adored her. And from the first day she met her, she wanted to see the horse every day.
It's the thought of Charisma that makes her move her sketch pad to her nightstand and slide off her bed. She pulls on a pair of jeans and a faded Elvis Costello t-shirt, and then slips into her red Doc Martens. What she does next is something that, to even her own surprise, involves little to no hesitation on her part. After switching off the lights and shutting her bedroom door, she walks across the hall to where she knows Beck is staying. She knocks twice, and when he answers she has to take an extra breath.
He's wearing loose, dark grey pajama pants and a white tank top that shows off the muscles in his arms. "Oh. Hey," he says, and smiles that stupid, infuriating smile that reaches his creamy brown eyes and looks more genuine than that of a kid with a sugar cookie.
"You know where the stables are, right?"
If he's surprised by the fact that she skipped her part of the greeting altogether, he doesn't show it. "Yeah. Why?"
She waits a second, before, "I want to go."
"Now?"
"Yes."
Jade watches his mind reel, but he still hasn't put the pieces together in his head. Stupid boy.
"I need you to come. I don't remember where it is," she clarifies. There's also no way in hell she's walking, alone, all the way across this enormous property in the middle of the night—but that's not a reason she'll share with him.
Beck is about to ask why on earth she has a sudden urge to go to the horse stables at midnight, but he reminds himself that it's a chance to get to talk to this girl. And while he has no plans on opening up to her about his life, he's not exactly in a place to turn down a new—and beautiful, might he add (and funny and smart and now he's getting carried away)—friend.
"Okay. Give me a second to put some clothes on."
"I'll meet you outside in five," Jade replies, and walks away from the door to make her way down the stairs. When Beck appears in jeans and a t-shirt, he closes the door behind him and starts walking alongside her.
They maintain a silence that lasts about five minutes before Beck breaks it. "So, is there a reason we're walking out to the stables at midnight?" There's no vinegar in his voice whatsoever, only genuine curiosity.
Jade sighs; this boy had ruined her plan to not talk to him. "The last time I came here, I was ten, and my favorite thing about this place was the stable. I want to see if Charisma is still there."
"Oh, Charisma," he says in acknowledgement. Jade's eyes open towards him and he smiles. "She's here. Stubborn and troublesome as always. Two days ago, she bucked up and knocked over an entire barrel of hay. She's a pain in my ass, but she's beautiful."
"That's the horse I remember."
After another few silent minutes, it's Jade who speaks again. "So why are you here, anyway?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, how did you end up in the middle-of-nowhere, working for Georgia? Aren't you, like, seventeen?"
"I am." He pauses, and Jade hopes she hasn't struck a nerve that will make things awkward between them, seeing how they'll be stuck together all summer. "It's kind of a long story, but I needed a job and place to stay, and she offered me one here. Your grandmother saved my life."
Jade gives a single nod. She doesn't reply because she doesn't know how, but Beck speaks again anyways.
"California, right?"
"Born and raised," she answers.
"Must be nice." He sticks his hands in his pockets as they walk. "I've heard the weather there is fantastic, and I've always wanted to go to the beach."
"Los Angeles is overrated, but it's better than this place. I can't believe I'm stuck here for the summer."
"At least you're away from your parents," he points out.
Jade looks at him strangely for a second, as if he'd said something out of line. He really doesn't know her, after all. But then she shrugs her shoulders and nods. "That's true."
When they arrive at the stable, Jade watches him unlock the wooden door and slide it open. He flicks on the light switch, illuminating the bulbs that hang over each of the four horses' stables. "She's the second one on the left," Beck reminds his companion, who promptly walks over to see the animal awake and standing.
As soon as Jade's presence is clear to the horse, Charisma walks over to the gate of her stable. She sticks her neck out over the half-door to be groomed by her visitor, and Jade begins softly petting Charisma's face. "She's huge," she says, turning to look at Beck.
"She's pregnant."
Her eyes widen for a second and she returns her attention to the mare. "Can she still be ridden?"
"Yeah, definitely. Tomorrow, if you want."
"Okay."
They head back after ten minutes, and they're walking through a patch of trees when—out of nowhere—a small animal darts right in front of them. It scares the life out of Jade, who backs up into Beck, who gently grabs onto her hips to pull her back in an instinctual impulse.
The two teenagers stay like that for less than five seconds before Jade regains her stamina and Beck sheepishly drops his hands back to his sides.
They don't say anything for the rest of the walk home. Beck wonders why it feels so natural to have wanted to protect her. Jade can still feel the tingling on her skin from where his hands had been.
Neither one of them wants to forget about it.
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Thoughts?