Disclaimer: Jericho is not mine.
The run had not gone well - that, at least, was what she had pieced together from the dribs and drabs of information that she had heard. Most people in town (originally not knowing what the purpose of the run had been) didn't necessarily share that assessment. Heather had a hundred different mental versions of "I told you so" running through her head and all of them were directed at herself. She had known that Jake would not recognize a working mechanical governor if he saw one. She didn't know much about the mayor's background, but she was guessing that electrical engineering and alternate power sourcing were not a part of his curriculum vitae. Although, if she was being scrupulously honest, there was nothing really in her own career decisions and general lifestyle that would make anyone suspect that she would be familiar with those things either.
She had always pegged Dale as a polite kid when she saw him in the market or around the school, but he had never struck her as the type that was spending his free time learning how to strip wires. She wasn't surprised that they had come back with little other than the knowledge of a potential market for the town's salt mine. She blamed herself. She was supposed to be there for that reason. She was the one who not only knew but understood what it was that they were looking for on the excursion.
She had also done what she knew none of the others had. She had cornered Roger and gotten him to be explicit about what exactly the system at Black Jack was like. He refused to elaborate any further in reference to the guards other than issuing strict instructions to make sure that no one crossed them. He had, however, been willing to tell her that from his general impression and the way the traffic seemed to move, there appeared to be a sort of a vetting process wherein new people to the place were herded in the direction of the main boards advertising various goods and services whereas those that appeared to come in to do business on a regular basis skipped that section altogether and went around to booths and tents that had no signs up advertising what it was that was being offered within them.
"They like to know they are doing business with people who have shown that they can cover what they want," he told her with a shrug of his shoulders. "What we're wanting is going to be something that a lot of people may be looking for and a lot of people probably don't have. It's not going to be sitting out in the open. It's going to be tucked away in one of those places where they can sit back and let the customers come to them."
Jake hadn't known that. It was another way that she had failed their group. It didn't occur to her to think that Jake might have had his own conversation with Roger. There was something awkward and avoidant there that was kind of rivaling the level of that between the two of them. She could make her guesses as to why, but she would never say them out loud. Jericho was a small town that subsisted on gossip. Food shortages and a manmade disaster of epic proportions didn't touch that. She knew a lot more about things than people gave her credit for - sometimes she thought she knew more than the people involved. It was an advantage of being a nonbiased spectator and all that. She almost snorted at that thought. If there was one part of this that was perfectly clear to her, it was that she was anything other than unbiased.
A few days later, she knew things on the trip to Blackjack had not gone the way they had hoped. That, at least, was what she had heard. It wasn't like she had any firsthand knowledge. That stomach virus had been as nasty as it had been ill timed, and she had let everyone down in consequence. Word was that they returned with a few items for Dale to add to the offerings in the market, but they hadn't seen so much as a trace of the mechanical governor for which they were looking. Maybe her going would not have made any difference, but she had no way to convince herself of that. It would always be hanging over her head - the fact that she might have been able to notice something that the others had missed. The simple fact of the matter was that not a one of them had actually known what it was that they were looking for that day, and they had gone off without that information because she had insisted that she be the one to do it before backing out on them at the last moment.
The news that they had brought back with them may have been welcome, but the lack of hope that seemed to permeate the town as Gray Anderson held more meetings about the direness of the fuel situation was a level of dangerous that she was not sure all of them were grasping yet. Thinking that someone was coming to rescue them was not going to help them get into gear and do the things that they needed to do, but thinking that there was nothing to be done was going to kill off their ability to keep going. They needed a goal. They needed a plan. They needed some light at the end of the tunnel to get them through the darkness.
She needed some sleep because she was getting positively maudlin. The last time she had waxed this pathetically poetic about a situation she had foregone sleeping for three days in order to finish off six papers and the twenty remaining observation hours for one of her classes so that she could go accept an unexpected opening in a spring break mission project her sophomore year of college without anything outstanding hanging over her head. She had crashed for the entire thirteen hour van ride before she was even moderately functional again. She shouldn't be tired given the amount of sleeping she had done while she was sick, but the way that she had been running from project to project trying to make up for the time that she had been down wasn't helping any - especially since she had been pushing her way through the lingering after effects of the illness in order to get caught up instead of sleeping her way out of the end of sickness fuzziness. There was no more time for fuzziness. There was no more time for anything. Winter was hitting hard. The people of Jericho were not collectively ready.
When she stops by the store and sees that there are a few items here and there that were not previously available, the only thing she can think about is what may have been overlooked. It's nice that the store is still running, and she appreciates that Dale seems to be trying (although she has to say that she has been watching the way the school hierarchy works in Jericho for the previous three years and the Skylar Stevens hanging around the background thing still kind of makes her eyes widen in surprise no matter how many times she has seen it). She is used to it taking a lot more years out of high school for those social gaps to narrow than what she is seeing in front of her, but she supposes that the situation calls for a little acceleration of the normal timelines.
When she sees Mayor (don't call me that) Green, he looks like he has seen things that he expected but did not want to see all the same. He is working on things in the background (she thinks even though she can't prove it); he seems to be going out of his way to not do anything that could be construed as stepping on Gray Anderson's toes in public. She appreciates politicians that leave their civil service and go back to their private lives as a general principle, but if any occasion called for welcoming someone with experience to stick around in an advisory capacity, then it was the situation in which they currently found themselves.
When she sees Jake . . . well, she generally only sees Jake from a far distance. She isn't actively avoiding him (and she likes to think that he doesn't have any reason to actively avoid her). She was sick; he was in some sort of an accident. The longest conversation they have had was her rushed telling him that the story of the Marines' radio being damaged was some sort of a bogus cover so that he could pass the information along to the right people (which was an unpleasant story that did little to shore up her faith in humanity even if it did leave her with an actual tank that she got to tinker with).
She reminds herself (repeatedly) that she hadn't even met the man a few months ago and that just because they weathered some crisis situations together doesn't make them the kind of friends that hang out in each other's back pockets and meet up to share stories about their days. Besides, she does not put herself in the path of people that have made it clear that they are not interested. She knows she's better than that. She doesn't have time for that sort of drama anyway. There are far more important things that require her focus.
They needed heat. They needed food. They needed . . . lists and lists of things that were incredibly overwhelming to look at in mass. Thus, Heather began to work her way through them in the same way that she tackled all the problems in her life that seemed too big to deal with at first glance - she dove in and fixed one piece after another as they fell under her hand until she came to a place where things weren't clear then sat back and looked at the big picture until she could find a trail she could follow to start the process all over again.
She was too busy to spend time thinking about Jake Green - mostly.