After awhile, the sounds of her sobs ceased. She stayed quiet, her head still nestled against her knees. When she finally looked up at me her face was controlled. She was back in strategy mode, and only the redness of her eyes would betray that anything happened at all.
One deep, heavy breath was all she allowed herself until she threw herself back into action. In a matter of seconds, Jo pulled herself to her feet and exited the room. Before I could muster the strength to call out and ask her where she was going, she returned with a first aid kit.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wasted so much time. You’re hurt. I should’ve—“
“This is nothing,” I said, cutting her off. I couldn’t bear to hear her apologize about anything. Not after tonight. Not after what I saw. It all made sense now. The way she was. How she kept herself hidden from the whole world. It reminded me of Jenna talking about Post Traumatic Stress, something she studied in AP Psych. These men carried with them the war at all times, never fully able to live in the world they returned to. Jo was kinda like that. Except her war was still raging on.
“I’m gonna kill whoever’s responsible for the shifts, Jo. I really am,” I said, wincing as she began to clean out the cuts her father put on my face.
“You saved me. If we never had shifted back here, he would have gotten away with it,” she replied simply. That’s what made it so difficult to hear. How quickly she was back to shoving all her sadness and anger away. I wasn’t ready to just be done with it. I was pissed.
It wasn’t fair to make me carry it all.
But I’d do anything for her tonight.
We were partners. One strong when the other is weak.
Jo’s hands moved down to my ribs and I nearly yelped. I could feel the sweat begin to cover my forehead. I clamped my mouth together to keep from cursing as she felt around. “I think you might have a broken rib or two. There’s not much to do about that now. We can’t take you to a hospital.”
I nodded. “Too many questions.”
She nodded back.
“You think you can make it resting here until we shift back?” she asked.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Guess not. Put your arm around my shoulders. I’ll help you to someplace where you can lie down.”
Before Jo left me alone lying on Jenna’s parents’ bed, I directed her to Jenna’s parents’ closest. She picked out some dry clothes for both of us. I didn’t dream of asking her to help me change. It took me the entire time Jo was in the shower, which had to have been a good half hour, to manage to put on the new clothes. By the time I was done, I was exhausted and in more pain than I had ever been before. I’d never walked away from a football game feeling like this.
Adrenaline is a great thing when it’s coursing through you.
But you’re going to pay for it.
Trust me.
When Jo returned to the bedroom she was wearing Jenna’s mom’s robe over the sweat pants and shirt she pulled from the closest. Standing in the doorway, she watched me. “You going to be okay in here by yourself?”
I managed a laugh despite the pain that shot through my chest. “Sleeping is one thing I’m good at.”
Jo’s mouth transformed into a thin smile. She tucked a strand of her wet hair behind her ear. She was going to stay in the guest room, but she seemed hesitant to leave. “I should have remembered it was you,” she said softly, wrapping the tie of the robe over and over her fingers till the tips began to turn purple.
“What do you mean?”
“When the police came they asked me a lot of questions about the man who beat up my dad...and the other guy. I didn’t remember a lot about him. I just remembered what he told me. He was going to make the bad men go away. I was to lock myself in the bathroom until I heard the sirens.”
Jo paused, taking a deep breath. Her eyes found mine. “It was you.”
The enormity of it all hit me. I found it even harder to breathe than before. And that’s saying something considering I had a few broken ribs. My face heated up, and I couldn’t look at her. It was unthinkable to even imagine the shift never happening. She said it. If this never happened, the shift, the whole damn mess, that low-life would have...would have...
“Tell me things got better,” I asked, nearly panting between the shock and rage I still felt from the night’s events.
Jo took a step further into the room. She still kept the rope from the robe tightly wound over her fingers. “Social services finally stepped in. They’d been to my house like a billion times before that though. Neighbors used to call a lot when I was younger. But he always found a way to keep me.”