I plan to deliver a solid second draft of the novel 3 Lives in Jury every Thursday. There will be mistakes because two drafts are not nearly enough. The freedom of experimentation has a price. I apologize in advance. Drop me a line. I’d love to hear what you think. I can be reached at terryfries.edit@gmail.com.
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BONUS: I am posting two chapters this week because chapter 2 isn’t long enough to have a good soak in the tub with.
Chapter 2
Lucy distrusted the smell of the office. Dr. Kappens was all right, but the office smelled of scented candles. Sandalwood was the worst of those she could name, but any other floral, wooden stench was equally eye-watering. The smells were secondary, however. It was really because the smells reminded her of the prissy ladies of Jury, who bought and sold candles like contraband in distinguished paper bags at home parties. Every time Lucy smelled a candle of a particular stature, she was reminded of their wagging fingers and barking complaints when they caught her sleeping in the cemetery or pitching her tent in the park. Stuff like that.
She took the seat Whit had occupied moments ago opposite Dr. Kappens. Social Services ordered her to attend weekly sessions with the doctor as part of the latest convoluted arrangement to keep her in her home town.
“Is everything going OK with your stay at the Almas? How are you finding it?” Dr. Kappens asked.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. We’re cool. We’ve reached an understanding about flexible curfews, where I get to stay out all hours drinking and popping pills down at the beach.”
“Lucy, don’t blow this now.”
“I’m just kidding. We’ve got it figured out. No problems.”
“I’m glad. This could be good for you. The Almas are nice people.”
“They could be a little less nice,” Lucy said.
Dr. Kappens eased back into the couch and sighed. “Why do you say that? If they show concern that means they’re just looking out for you, Lucy. You have to respect their rules and understand that they’re doing this for you. They didn’t open their home because they felt like they needed another headache in their lives.”
“Why did they?”
“I don’t know what do you think?”
Lucy slouched back into the chair. “Their loser son needs a friend,” she said finally.
“Why do you think Whit is a loser? Don’t you like him?”
“You take everything too seriously, you know that?”
Another long silence.
Dr. Kappens leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees.
“Are you still seeing ghosts?” she asked.
Lucy shook her head. “I haven’t seen them.” She lied. Most people didn’t care for her ghost stories and those that did, only wanted to giggle over the details later with friends.
Dr. Kappens saw through the lie, but Lucy seemed content enough for now. The Alma home is a healthy situation for her. Her theory was that Lucy’s supernatural abilities, seeing ghosts, were cries for help. It couldn’t be pure coincidence the sightings popped up when she was under stress.
For her part, Lucy accepted that few people believed her and she wished a million times over that Dr. Kappens’ theories were true — that the grisly visions were fabrications of her own mind. That would mean a cure could exist or at least some management therapy might be found.
Instinctively, she knew Dr. Kappens was wrong. Spirits had been visiting her since she was old enough to remember. Ghosts had been with her always, long before her mother died and father left. Dr. Kappens was overly absorbed in textbook philosophies. The universe went deeper than science, Lucy thought.
Dr. Kappens dropped the issue, made a note to raise it again at a later date. Let her think about it for a few weeks.
“I want to address something else. I overheard part of your conversation with Donna in the outer officer earlier, it was hard not to. Do you think you were a little hard on her? It sounded to me like she was only trying to give you some advice, doing you a kindness.”
“A kindness. Well, lucky me.”
“Lucy, of course it’s a kindness. Maybe I should ask you then, how you feel about the support you receive from people like Donna and others in this town. It’s been going on for what, almost five years now? A lot of people have spent a lot of time, keeping you out of group homes, feeding you, giving you clothes, providing you with a bed and a home. I would say people extend a lot of kindness your way.”
“Hrmph.” Kind or not, Lucy didn’t like them. “I don’t need a whole town of moms. I bet I have tiny holes in the back of my head from their constant pecking.” She put her thumb and index finger together and knocked the back of her skull.
Dr. Kappens smiled and checked her watch.
“All right Lucy, time’s up for today.”
Lucy grabbed her jacket, collected her backpack and wasted no time getting outside.
She kicked Whit’s feet as he reclined in a white Cape-Cod chair on the porch. “Let’s go.”
Whit’s stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since lunch, and he needed to run to Sketchy’s for a snack. Sketchy’s was the only convenience store in town that didn’t do double duty as a gas station. The store’s actual name was Chase’s Food Mart, after owner Sketchy Chase, but everybody knew it as Sketchy’s.
The 10 blocks of Jury’s downtown were laid out in a neat grid, most of it visible from the porch at the front of Dr. Kappens’ office near the top of the hill on Blister Avenue. Her actual home was seven doors down, at the bottom of the hill. She lived with her three boys, two of them step-children, in a two-story, colonial constructed about the same time as the office, which was a small, pioneer-style renovation project, built in the1920s.
“Let’s walk down the hill to Sketchy’s before heading home,” Whit said.
“You buying?”
“Nope. I do the texting, you do the buying.” Whit texted his parents that he and Lucy were making a side trip for junk food and would be an hour late.
Wanda and Matt were thrilled. Their son needed to spend more time with kids his age. Since his return from the abduction, they worried Whit spent too much time alone. He ducked his friends, quit all his sports and after-school activities. Even after a year, Wanda and Matt had not seen a single one of Whit’s old friends come by the house for a visit. Whit wanting to spend an extra hour with friends was a godsend.
Lucy and Whit headed down the hill along Blister Avenue until they reached the intersection with Main Street. Ahead, Blister Avenue headed north on the flats. Behind them, Blister climbed the hill as it headed south past Dr. Kappens’ office and a small park at the top of the hill, eventually ending at Victoria Secondary School sitting on Jury’s periphery. Another road immediately at the top of the hill shot off westward, eventually curving back toward north, where it tracked the edge of a rocky ledge until the rock face rounded off into a smooth hill and the street dropped back down and met up with Blister Avenue again at the far end of downtown.
When most residents refer to downtown Jury, they’re talking about the 10 blocks butting up against this rocky escarpment. At the town’s hub, at the intersection of Blister and Main, Big Heart Bakery convened most of the morning coffee meetings and prepared most of the dash-away lunches.
Whit and Lucy turned right on Main Street, and walked past the bakery, heading for Sketchy’s a couple of blocks up. Lucy pushed through the convenience store doors first. The door dinged as they entered and they were surrounded by smells of hotdogs and dust.
Frank Kappens, Petra’s son, was studying a rack of chocolate bars.
“Hey Frank, how are things? I missed you this morning,” Whit said.
“I ran a little late. I don’t think your mom was very happy with me, but we got everything looked after,” Frank fanned out three bars like playing cards.
Wanda worked as a nurse and treated Frank’s cystic fibrosis from her home every morning and after school. Frank stopped by the Alma house for 30 minutes of massage and compressions and following the morning treatments, he and Whit walked together to school. Since Lucy joined the Alma household, she became the third of the group.
Frank was a couple of years older, in Grade 12, but he was smaller than Whit and Lucy, a symptom of living with CF.
“Hi Frank,” Lucy said.
“Oh, hi Lucy.” Franked scanned her — up, down and over again.
Creep. The look made Lucy feel like prey and her back stiffened. She pushed her large, round glasses up on her nose and stepped toward him, a cold intimidation move.
“I heard about your run-in with Boyd at school today,” Frank said, noticing Lucy’s move into him. She’s checking out the merch at the Frank store, he thought. “Boyd can be a real asshole sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” Lucy said.
“Well, most of the time. But I’ve seen him on days when he’s an OK guy, when he tries to be.”
Lucy scoffed. “So, you’re saying most days he’s an asshole, but there are days when he decides to be nicer. You’re saying he chooses his asshole days and his non-asshole days. Is that what you’re saying Frank?”
What the fuck did I do to piss her off? Frank wondered. I was just making small talk. “Well, whatever. You got out of it. He probably won’t bother you anymore.”
“Right, sure.” Lucy wasn’t confident at all that Boyd Smithers would leave her alone. He was the type who raised himself up by standing on the shoulders of others. He’d be back bothering her before long.
The incident was no big deal from Lucy’s point of view. It was a collision in the school hallway that got blown out of proportion by a teacher who witnessed it. Boyd ran into Lucy, knocked her backward into the lockers and sent her sprawling on the floor. Lucy, in a fit, sprang to her feet and threw herself on his back, pounding and swearing as both of them crashed through the door of the science lab.
The science teacher, Mr. Lumby, was forced to separate them and file an incident report, logging the fourth strike against Lucy this year. That cranked it up to a new level and sparked a long talk with the principal.
With the scolding complete, and the pair appearing sufficiently contrite, the principal asked Boyd and Lucy to shake hands and apologize to one another.
“Sorry,” Boyd said.
“Fuck my life,” Lucy muttered.
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