AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The men groaned but the ladies cheered and with that, we all went to bed full and very content.
Chapter Six
Hindsight’s Twenty-Twenty
I am particularly practical when it comes to most things in my life. In my opinion, things are generally black and white. If you push A into B you get C, basically a proponent of the laws of nature. Jules, however, possessed a sixth sense about the grey area I knew nothing about. She had theories that supported the idea that pushing A into B could possibly get you C,D, and even E and being the blockhead I was, I grossly underestimated this talent of hers, until that is, we returned from our trip to Mauch Chunk.
The day we left was a day of horrid goings on in Bramwell, West Virginia. Jesse Thomas, Taylor Williams, and a very desperate and empty Marisa Hartford crammed their tiny minds together and were plotting against Jules and I with adult size weaponry; ammunition that the experts in their associated fields handled with kid gloves, never mind two hateful humans and their idiotic apprentice.
I wouldn’t even give Marisa that much credit. She was more of a minion of sorts. Though her involvement was minor, her part held the most excruciating effects and unfortunately she was too stupid to realize how deeply she was implicated in the entire process. That was, in my opinion, most decidedly by design on Jesse’s part.
Marisa Hartford belonged to a family of equine veterinarians. Apparently, the intelligent gene skipped her generation as she was the only child and one of her family, knowing what I do about the Hartfords, lacking in the fortitude to weigh the pros and cons of assisting in a highly dangerous and highly illegal crime. I will give Marisa credit where credit is due though, she had no idea what Taylor and Jesse were doing with the help she afforded them, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Hartford family is a decent family. They lived moderately and had no need or want for anything. It is definitely a possibility that they are one of the wealthiest families in Bluefield, but they are frugal. They don’t squander their profits like most families do and by far and away, excluding Marisa. They are a family of morals.
Those morals were lost on Marisa. She chose to help the imbeciles against her better judgment and for what do you ask? For further social rank in a high school she was less than a year from never seeing again.
Marisa worked two evenings a week, usually Friday and Saturday evenings, if she wasn’t cheering, to help out at her family’s equestrian practice. Here, she would answer phones and make appointments. Marisa, legally, along with her family’s careful practice and procedures, had absolutely no access to any of the medicines her grandfather or father kept on hand at their office. These seemingly harmless, yet potent glass viles were kept under lock and key and regularly inventoried.
Every day, Marisa’s grandfather would take his lunch at the exact same hour each day and leave the keys to the metal and glass cabinet inside a locked drawer in his hundred year old desk. The key to this desk hung on a ring that he kept with him at all times. The good doctor felt safe in thinking there would be no way those viles could be stolen, short of breaking the cabinet itself. At the end of his work day, he would place that key ring in a bowl on a table in his foyer.
Two weeks prior to Thanksgiving break, Marisa Hartford snuck into the foyer when she knew no one would be around and stole the singular key that opened the desk to gain access to the keys to the cabinet that held the tiny viles she so hazardously required.
“I’m gonna’ get the mail,” she screamed to her mother in the kitchen.
“No need. I’ve already gotten it,” her mother said, but Marisa pretended not to hear.
She walked to the end of her hundred yard driveway, the burning ember of a lit cigarette, her only guide.
“Jesse?” She asked.
“Don’t say my name, stupid.”
“Sorry,” she apologized.
She handed him the key.
“I’ll be back in an hour. Keep your cell phone on,” he ordered and rushed to his Mustang parked a hundred feet away.
Marisa hung her head back toward the house and opened the door.
“I told you Marisa, I’d already gotten the mail.”
“Oh,” Marisa lied, “I didn’t hear you.”
Marisa felt a stone settle heavily in the pit of her stomach. It was a stone heavy with shame and she would continue to add more and more, eventually weighing herself down enough that she would forget to eat by the week’s end.
Marisa received a text from Jesse Thomas thirty minutes later, telling her to meet him at her bedroom window. She quietly went to her room and was back out in less than five seconds with the key in hand. She acted as though she was searching for something on the foyer table and made enough noise to distract the family from her true task. She replaced the key back into the exact order she found it and walked into the kitchen acting as cheerfully as she could without arising suspicion.
The next day at school, Marisa met Jesse outside of her car to pick up the key he had made. She could have taken the key that night but she didn’t want to take the risk of owning that on a night she was acting strangely as it was. You see, Marisa’s mom checked up on her thoroughly. I’m guessing she saw a deficiency in her daughter and didn’t know how to compensate and Marisa knew this. She took the key from Jesse and he barely acknowledged her.
I felt sorry for Marisa when I learned of this information, such low self esteem. Who, in their right mind, would sink so low for further social gain? For any reason really?
The week of Thanksgiving break, Marisa ‘volunteered’ to cover the reception desk at the clinic because she ‘needed money’. In fact, Marisa ‘volunteered’ to cover the desk every night that week and, while her grandfather ate, she would steal away and remove the cabinet keys from his desk, and methodically extract an exact measured amount of the horse tranquilizer Ketamine through each individual wax vile stopper by syringe, enough that it would eventually add up to the dosage Taylor and Jesse needed but too little an amount to cause suspicion to the naked eye.
Then, she would place the cap on the syringe, lock the cabinet door, return the keys to his desk, and none would be the wiser. She repeated this process every single day during Thanksgiving break and by the end of the week, she had enough to heavily sedate a seventeen year old boy, about my size.
Jules and I arrived home from Mauch Chunk the following Saturday evening, rather late, and I dreaded having to go to church early the next morning but considered that Jules would be just as tired as I was and we could lean on one another, literally and figuratively. I was excited because we still had Monday and Tuesday off and the school week was only going to be three days before the weekend came upon us again. Basically, lots of time to take it easy. I had to admit, the football season was taking its toll on my body. I definitely didn’t get enough sleep either. Jules occupied my every thought.
