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“They never come to church. Their parents are always making excuses for them.”
“I know why,” Jules said, panicked.
“Now, Jules, they might just be trying to mess with our heads and obviously it’s working. Look at you. Who knows, they could be coming for a better reason.”
Yeah, right.
“No Elliott, they’re here for devious reasons. If they were coming here for innocent reasons than they would have approached me, apologized, try to atone for what they had done. No. They’re here to intimidate us.”
“Okay, let’s just get to the church and sit with our parents.”
She nodded.
We walked back into the hallway and passed the doors to the youth hall quickly trying to avoid Taylor and Jesse but unfortunately forgot about the second entrance to the hall and once we passed it, they followed quickly.
“Where y’all going?” Asked Jesse.
I knew who the mastermind was. I knew who the evil one really was. Taylor was only mean and Marisa was only stupid. They were merely pawns in Jesse’s game, but Jesse, Jesse was the real tyrant. The one whom Jules was most afraid of.
“None of your business Jesse,” I said. “Leave us be.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, “I want to make amends.”
“Nope.”
“Please Elliott? I’m really sorry about everything that happened. I miss our friendship.”
He was a terrible liar. I stopped, took a deep breath and stared down at him.
“And what is the ‘everything’ that you’re sorry about Jesse?” I asked, falsely hoping he would own up to breaking into Jules’ room.
“I’m sorry about the misunderstanding,” he evaded.
“What misunderstanding?”
“Our fight in History.”
“Nope. That was no misunderstanding. What I want to know is if you’re sorry for the other things you’ve done.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play coy with me. You’re the one who decided to break into Jules’ home and mess with us. That’s what you should be sorry for. Do you have any idea how badly I wish to hurt you for doing that? You’re lucky we’re at church.”
“Am I? He goaded.
I came within inches of his face and clinched my teeth. I still held Jules’ shaking hand. He was lucky. Very.
“Get away from us Jesse, you and Taylor, and stay away from us.”
“I don’t understand Elliott! We’re just trying to make amends here!” His voice trailed off as we ran to the narthex.
We heard them laughing as they walked the other way. We sat in the children’s cry room and I grabbed Jules’ hand so the current could calm us both down and I could read her thoughts. It took several minutes but it worked, as always, and soon after, we joined our parents. We didn’t mention what had happened to anyone, though. After all, hindsight’s twenty twenty.
After church, both our families, like all the families in Bramwell did after church, went to Babe’s to eat. By then, Jules and I had almost forgotten about Jesse and Taylor and were having an extraordinary time with a bunch of kids from school. We all chatted about our vacations, what we did, who we saw, what we ate and we were asked a lot of questions about how Mauch Chunk was. All in all, it was a harmless conversation until Marisa Hartford, who had been hiding at the end of the shared table, chimed in with, what I thought at the time was, the most peculiar question.
“What were you two talking about with Jesse and Taylor outside the youth hall? It seemed to get pretty heated,” she asked.
Everyone at our table respected us enough not to mention their names. Recently, it seemed, the group had split into two, the Jesse half and the Elliott half. They knew how we felt about them, so it came as a surprise that she would be so bold as to ask us in front of our half no less.
