It was a quiet day. Three days after I first learned Jack’s name. During that time I also learned that he was from a town just north of Green Bay called Suamico, and that he worked at an automotive shop. He offered these little nuggets of information in passing, remarking how they didn’t have a general store this nice where he came from and that he wished that he could’ve stayed and chatted for a little while longer but work at the shop was calling him back. Snippets of who he was, and I wanted to know more. Everytime he left was becoming a series of small heartbreaks, ones I’d struggled to content with. So much I wished to know about him, but so little time - so little courage.

It was a Saturday, so Mom was lounging in the apartment above, keeping the couch weighed down with the help of Grandma, watching Cheers, most likely, or Laverne and Shirley. I remained in the store, and I reveled in being alone again. I enjoyed those quiet moments to myself because I could change the radio to playing my favorite radio station - 95.7 FM, which always played the newest music, mostly rock - while reading whatever nature magazines were available this week and not worry about Mom criticizing me for it. But I couldn’t help but feel a lingering dread creeping through the air, the anticipation that something - anything - was about to happen and break this silence.

I’d a suspicion that a lot of the feeling stemmed from old memories from my years in high school, of being forced to participate in some social activity on the weekends when I’d prefer the solitude of home.

I’d been conditioned to anticipate Chastity bursting in through the store’s door, to coax me to come with her to the bar, or to go out with her and whatever partner she was close with that month to have a beer and hot pretzel. But regardless of the day, bars were always… too much, engulfing me in a cyclone of incoherent, numbing buzzes. They were swollen with cacophonies that left me feeling deflated, numb, and dead. And those pretzels Chastity had loved since we were young were never a favorite of mine - the grittiness of the salt always felt too alien in my mouth, no matter how many of the large salt chunks I'd manage to brush off the hard, hot bread.

Chastity Schmidt had always been a party girl, though - my polar opposite. We’d been friends since we were ten years old, having bonded over the fact that our parents cursed us with the names of one of the seven virtues - when neither of us ever felt virtuous. Though, I’d never thought of us as friend-friends, as girl friends. If anything, I almost felt like her pet. Our friendship mostly consisted of me following her as she tried to show off to boys - and girls - on the playground, me tagging along with her and a boy she kissed under the bleachers on a date where she tried to set me up with this boy’s cousin (the typical farm kid, hands rough and calloused, with a wad of chew stuffed into his lip). I was just there. I think she felt bad for me, having no friends and little drive to socialize. She made me socialize, for better or worse, thinking that it would’ve done me good.

She passed away our senior year, a week before graduation, of high school following a drunk driving incident, and while my heart hurt for her passing for a brief time, I still felt a lingering dread that she’d intrude on the quietness of a Saturday. I just wanted to go upstairs and read or watch the T.V., that was if Mom and Grandma were done with their programs., with a warm drink and chips that I knew wouldn’t have any of those nefarious chunks of salt that make me gag. I wished I were lively enough to enjoy the joys of Saturday evenings.

But while Chastity may have been dead and gone, my Wyrm had proven himself her replacement to prevent such a tranquil evening from happening.

This particular Saturday had been quiet, as I’ve said. Above me, there was the rhythm of footsteps, faint, though raucous, laughter, and the hum of the TV heard through the ceiling. It was nearly muffled by Stacey Q’s Two of Hearts on the radio, and together they provided the perfect ambience as I flipped through that week’s edition of Ranger Rick (I distinctly remember reading about the foxes, hares, caribou, owls, and wolves of the Arctic Circle in that edition).

Then the peace was shattered.

Jack’s arrival was violently announced by slam of the front door, the harsh clang of the bell as it flew off the door and clattered against the floor, nearly interrupting the harsh slam of boots sprinting across waxed tiles.

There was a flash of leather as he leapt over the counter, slammed down onto the floor, and scrambled to hide under the countertop’s cover. 

During all of this I yelped, too stunned to do much else as he now crouched near my feet, obviously in  hiding from something, having obviously been running from said something.

Jack was panting, breath hot against my calves even through layers of legwarmers and denim jeans. After what seemed like an eternity (though it really was no more than a couple heartbeats), he eased himself up just enough to peek over the countertop, only to duck back out of sight when the shadow passed over the door.

So my suspicions of hiding were correct. But hiding from what? My own terror was beginning to set in then, afraid that someone and anyone would burst into the store in search of Jack, leaving me to be caught in their crossfire. The thought made my heartbeat skyrocket, sweat forming along my brow and down my back.

It took a few moments before my shock passed and my heart’s rhythm was steady. It was numbing, the adrenaline cool throughout my body.

I looked underneath the counter, at Jack cramped beside my legs with red-cheeked, breathless terror still etched in his narrow features. In his hand he held something shining, something golden.

“Jack?” I asked, tilting my head. He didn't respond. “Jack.” I reached to touch his shoulder, but instead decided to nudge his foot with my own

He jerked, though not violently, and a finger flew to his lips in a gesture of silence. He then dared another glance over the counter. “D’you see anyone out there?” He whispered, and this glistening throat bobbed in a swallow.

Yes. Pedestrians, nothing out of the ordinary. “Like who?”

“Cops.” He said bluntly, breathlessly, and ducked back down again.

The word hit me like a cold slap across the face, and that panic rose again. “C-Cops?” I repeated back to him, in a hushed, panicked whisper, as though the walls themselves were leaning in, prepared to report us to the police at a moment’s notice.

Jack only nodded, breath ragged

Silence, and fear as my mind was whirling at a million miles a minute. A thief was lying at my feet, and lord only knew what he held in his burgling clutches! Did he have a weapon with him? A gun to blow my brains out? A blade that could disembowel me? A brass knuckle to break my teeth in? With a speed that was nauseating my mind was churning out morbid, vivid images of what Jack would or could do in that moment, or even what the police would do (if there even were police following him) if they followed him. Would I be arrested for harboring a fugitive? Oh God, what would Mom think if I did get arrested?

What if-

I screamed at the sudden ringing shrill of the telephone on the countertop.

It must’ve startled us something fierce because the metal rack holding postcards, the ones stamped with images of Milwaukee and Lake Michigan’s coast, rattled as Jack hit his head against the bottom of the countertop with a sharp, seething hiss.

Hand shaking, I answered.

I tried to tame the tremor that was rising in my throat as I answered, “Hello?”

It was Mom.

“Everything alright down there?” Her voice sounded distracted, the distant crackle of the TV heard over the receiver, her tone condescending, as though asking a child in trouble what was wrong rather than ensuring the safety of her daughter. If anything her store was her child, not me.

I hesitated, gaze fixated on Jack as he rubbed the reddening mark where his head collided with the counter. He gawked up at me, silently, those eyes wide and pleading and desperate. He even held his hands out in silent prayer. Stay quiet… I’m begging you, don’t say anything. I’m not here…  his gaze said.

The harsh bark of Grandma asking “what’s going on” beyond the receiver snapped me back to the present and I hastily answered, “Yes, Mom, everything is fine. I just…. I fell off my chair, landed on my back, it’s fine. The store is fine.”

“Be sure to put some ice on that, then,” and she hung up, and I returned the phone to the receiver.

A heavy sigh that rattle through my throat as I ran a hand through my hair, damp with sweat.

Jack’s body sagged with a sigh, and something electric coursed all through me as he rested his forehead against my knee and a hand fell to softly squeeze my ankle. “Thank you, Temperance, thank you…”

He hid for another ten minutes, none of us saying anything too many, I was too afraid to speak, before getting up, warily checking outside, and running off without another word.

The imprint of his grip on my ankle resonated for hours after, and to this day I cannot discern if what I felt that night was a growing affection or a germinating dread.