Emancipated Child
An Archers Beach Story
by
Sharon Lee
Jason's lungs were on fire, and he could hear Matt's sneakers pounding on the trail behind him over the harsh rasp of his breath. Matt was taller than he was, and on the track team, but Jason had a head start.
"Too good for us, you little bastard? I'll show you too good!"
It was worrisome that Matt had breath left over from running to yell with. Jason couldn't have answered if he wanted to, which he didn't. All he wanted to do was to get the hell gone, out of Matt's range — which wasn't going to happen, so the next best thing was to get to the store, where there would be people — or at least Johnna. Not even Matt was stupid enough to beat up somebody in front of a witness.
On the right he saw the short-cut that took a corner off the main trail and would put him in the store's parking lot in a couple of minutes.
Assuming Matt didn't catch him first.
Jason took the turn into the shortcut hard, sand and pebbles skidding underfoot. He took a hard breath and felt it come easier, deeper, even as his short legs found a renewed burst of speed.
Second wind, he thought, pelting down the thin trail between high walls of cat-tail and swamp grass. He could still hear Matt behind him, but it sounded like his cousin hadn't found his own second wind.
In fact, it sounded like he was laboring, his pursuing footsteps not pounding so much as. . .sliding; almost as if the sand were loose, rather than packed down hard.
Jason ran on, fists pumping, breathing hard, but not gasping, suddenly feeling as if he could keep on running forever. He took a curve in the path at speed, dodging the skinny dead tree that made the way even thinner.
Must be that runner's high the jocks talked about.
Jason flew on.
"Hey!" Matt yelled from behind him, surprise sounding amidst a loud crack and a clatter like sticks being flung onto stone. "Hey, ow!"
Ow?
Jason slowed, and dared to look back over his shoulder. Matt might be going to kill him, but they were cousins, and if he was really hurt —
He got one glimpse of the old tree, now missing the limb that had overhung the path, and Matt pushing himself to his knees. If that limb had hit —
This way!
His sleeve was snatched and he was yanked to the right, through a tangle of dry reeds and out again into a small grassy place, hemmed in with ash and marsh willow.
Jason staggered to a stop, feeling damp and exhausted. Before him, a grey stone thrust out of the grass. Jason collapsed onto its conveniently flat top as if it were a stool, closed his eyes and waited for his heart-rate to come down. He strained his ears, but he didn't hear any signs of pursuit, which made him wonder again if his cousin was hurt.
And how much he cared.
"I've got to get to work pretty soon," he said outloud to the glade in general.
There was no response, unless you counted the sudden whistle of a red-wing blackbird. He hadn't really expected a response, but he did try to be polite. His dad, back before the cancer, had said that it was the least a man who heard voices could do, was to be polite.
The voices themselves — well. He'd heard them his whole life, sometimes direct, like the one that had yelled at him to get off the trail this way. Mostly, though, they were a comfortable background noise. The voices were company, sort of, like a radio playing somewhere in the house made you feel less alone.
"Why does he hate you?" a rough voice asked then — an outloud voice, not at all like the voices in his head, and one Jason had never heard before.
He turned his head, carefully.
A girl was leaning against a swamp maple, arms crossed over her chest. She might've been his age, her face was brown, and her hair, too. She was wearing a bottle green t-shirt and brown cargo pants. Her eyes were the same green as her t-shirt.
Not somebody he knew, and he knew everybody in Surfside. 'Course, there wasn't any law said she couldn't've come across the walking path higher up in the main marsh; or down, from Scarborough; or up, from Archers Beach.
"Well," Jason said carefully. "He doesn't really hate me so much as he's pretty mad at me."
The girl's eyebrows lifted.
"Why is he pretty mad, then?"
None of your business, was on the tip of his tongue, but. . .he had a. . .feeling.
Besides, it wasn't like it was a state secret.
"He's mad 'cause I'm emancipated," he said. "His folks and him figure that means I think I'm too good for them."
"What is emancipated?" she asked, which he could've predicted for the next question. Everybody asked that one.
"It means I petitioned the court to be able to — to leave my parent's authority and house, and to live on my own." The full legal name was emancipated child, which he didn't bother to say, because he was, ferchristsake, not a child. He was sixteen, and fully in control of his own life.
He took a breath and answered the next most common question before she could ask it.
"And the reason I did it is because my dad died and my mom. . .She moved out of town, up to Portland, and in with —"
. . .with her coke-head boyfriend. He swallowed that. There was such a thing as too personal, after all.
". . .with a friend. We don't get along — me and the friend -- and besides I didn't want to live in Portland." He'd been sick in Portland; all the time — not bad sick, like cancer, or anything like that. Just that his head hurt, and his stomach was queasy, kinda, and he hadn't been able to hear the voices in his head over all the rush and racket.
He took another breath. "So I got a job doing handywork at the Sunspray, and I showed I was able to be independent and all."
"And that boy is angry because you are emancipated and he is not?"
Jason laughed. "No -- oh, hell no! Matt's hot — well, I'm guessing he caught it from his mom — she's my mom's sister. They just all figured I should move in with them, see? Except that wasn't going to work, either." Because him and Matt weren't exactly best friends even when he wasn't channeling Aunt Dottie's anger — and her taste in boyfriends wasn't any better than his mom's, and besides that — they lived in Scarborough.
No reason to say any of that, either, to some strange girl chance-met in the marsh, so he shifted on the rock and said instead.
"I'm going to hafta get to work pretty soon."
"So that you remain emancipated." She nodded and pushed away from the tree she'd been leaning against. "I'll walk with you," she said, "to Johnna's store."
"Sure," he said, sliding off the rock.
She was taller than he was, which almost everybody was, so no surprises there; and skinny in a way that said she might've just had a growth spurt.
"I'm Jason Thibodeau," he said, as she stepped in front of him and disappeared into the wall of reeds. "By the way."
He followed her, holding an arm in front of his eyes, but it — it almost seemed like the reeds bent out of his way. There must, he told himself, be a trail — maybe a deer track — that the girl knew about and that he just didn't see.
She was waiting for him on the path, looking back the way he had come. He snuck a look that way, himself. The dead tree stood where it always had, one of its limbs down and shattered across the path.
There wasn't any sign of Matt.
Jason breathed a sigh of relief.
"Your cousin was not hurt," the girl said. "Only frightened."
"That's good," he said, and added, "though I can't think of much that would scare Matt."
She snorted lightly, maybe it was a laugh, and turned toward Johnna's store, walking to the left of the path and slightly ahead of him.
"What's your name?" Jason asked, after they'd gone a couple dozen steps in silence.
She glanced at him over her shoulder — a flash of green eyes behind rough brown hair.
"Cedar," she said. "Cedar White."
"You live around here?"
She snorted another laugh. "Oh, yes."
"New?" he asked, which people from Away might think was rude, he remembered, and added a reason for why he might care. "Hadn't seen you in school, is all."
"Ah," she said, and gave him another, slower, look from behind her hair. "I am home schooled."
That set a tingle up his nerves — a lie if he'd ever heard one. He could tell, usually, when people were telling the truth. Still, lying about being home-schooled didn't prove she was a runaway — that? Was probably his own nerves talking, since he'd put some thought into what he'd do, and where he'd go, while he was waiting for the court to decide his case, knowing how slim his chances were for a win, and if he had the guts to run away, if he didn't win.
Lucky for him, it hadn't come to that, because where would he have run to, except back to Surfside, year-round population just six souls under 200, and no place at all to hide?
The path widened into a dirt parking lot. Jason stretched his legs so he was walking beside Cedar and then had to drop back again as she went mounted the step onto the porch, opened the door, stepped inside — and paused, the door balanced on brown fingertips.
He grabbed it hurriedly. "Thanks."
Johnna was working in the front of the middle cooler — making sure the beer was stocked and cold for the home-coming crew, Jason knew. She looked 'round when the bell rang and straightened.
"You want something?" she asked, glaring at Cedar.
The girl nodded. "Work."
"An' you figure I got work?" Johnna shook her head and looked over Cedar's shoulder to Jason.
"Cousin of yours in here, says to let you know, if you should happen by, that he'll see you in school tomorrow."
"Thanks." He slipped past Cedar, opened up the front cooler, pulled out a can of root beer and a premade ham sandwich on white bread.
"That all you havin' for supper, boy?" Johnna asked him, like she did every day.
He shook his head, like he did every day. "Just to get me through work," he said. "I'll have supper when I get home."
"You see you do. Vegetables, I'm talking."
"Carrots," he promised her, fishing a couple dollar bills out of his jeans pocket. He put them on the counter by the register, then looked to the girl, standing silent to one side.
"You need something to eat?" he asked her. "It's on me."
She blinked green eyes at him, the side of her mouth turning up like she'd tasted something bad.
"You never mind 'bout her," Johnna said, letting the door to the cooler thump shut. "Dinner comes with the shift." She gave Cedar another glare, not exactly, Jason thought, friendly, before she turned it on him.
"You'd best get on 'fore Vonny dings you for being late."
* * *
END OF SAMPLE
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