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Jane's Story: Chapter 2
Chapter Two: The Hunter
It was October 9th, or in other words, Jane’s birthday. She was turning sixteen and because of a terrible string of events, the day had a pretty rocky start. First, Jane woke up to a potent burning smell and shot out of bed, thinking that the house was on fire. Going downstairs, she discovered that the source of this smell was not a fire, but a bunch of charcoal sitting on the kitchen table. She then realized that it was a cake. Her birthday cake. Next to the misshapen, unappetizing cake, she saw Andrew Posh, her guardian, sitting slumped over in one of the chairs at the kitchen table with his head buried in his hands. He was still wearing his pajamas and it looked like he’d pulled another all-nighter, judging from the heavy bags under his eyes. The light brown, messy hair on his head rose and he jumped at hearing Jane’s voice when she said, “Morning.”
He quickly glanced at her, then focused on the cake and then back to her. He said, embarrassed, “Uh, happy birthday, Jane. I woke up early to surprise you by making your cake this year, but as you can see –“
“It didn’t turn out so well,” Jane finished his sentence looking curiously at the black, hideous figure on the kitchen table.
“Well, yeah. It was my first time and I didn’t quite understand the directions on the box,” he replied with a sheepish grin on his face.
All of a sudden, Jane started to laugh. “This is great!” she said, “who would’ve guessed that I’ve got an A-grade patissier living in my house!”
Seeing her reaction, Andrew felt a little more at ease and started to laugh as well. “I’m glad you like it, Jane. We should probably get this cleaned up, though, shouldn’t we? We can just buy a cake from Lola’s Bakery, like we did all the years before I tried to show off my baking skills.”
“Wait. What about schoo– oh that’s right! Today’s Sunday! I kinda forgot since this is the first time I’ve woken up at 6 A.M. on a weekend.” She yawned, “Any other day, I would be getting ready for school at this time.”
“Yeah… sorry about that, kiddo.”
After cleaning up the charcoal cake, Jane proceeded to take a shower, only to be shocked by the ice cold drops that poured down on her when she turned the water on. She screamed at the top of her lungs in shock. Andrew came running up the stairs and shouted, “JANE, ARE YOU OKAY?” His eyes were open wide. He was extremely worried, for some reason and had run up to where she was in such a rush that he didn’t even bother to finish shaving and getting dressed. Half of his face was still covered with shaving cream, and he was dressed in a sloppy, half-buttoned polo shirt, pajama pants, and one sock that was sliding off of his foot.
“What’s up with the water?!” Jane screamed with chattering teeth. “It’s f-freezing!”
Andrew sighed, and his face relaxed a bit. “Oh, I forgot to tell you that the hot water is off, for some reason, today. I was going to call a plumber over to check it out.”
“Maybe next time, you should REMEMBER to tell me when the hot water is off so I don’t step into an ice cold shower!” she howled in a fit of anger. She received no reply from this comment, and continued on with her business. On the other side of the door, Andrew lowered his head and whispered under his breath, “It’s not like they’d be able to find us anyway, haha.” He was laughing, but his dark brown eyes were grim and serious. He was lost in thought.
After that hectic morning, Jane and Andrew finally got out of the house and headed to the bakery. “So when, exactly, do you plan on calling someone to fix the hot water?” Jane asked, with a hint of bitterness form earlier that day.
“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. I’ll get to it,” Andrew replied with a laid back attitude that almost seemed forced.
“What’s wrong, Andrew?” she asked, having picked up on this.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” Andrew responded uneasily.
“Suit yourself, but I’m always here if you want to talk about it.”
“Thanks, but I’d prefer not to.” There’s no point in getting her worried when she doesn’t have to be, he thought.
They came up to the intersection that the bakery was across from and started to cross, when suddenly, a silver, newly bought Lexus came speeding by and splashed a puddle of rainwater that had resulted from the storm the night before all over Jane. Andrew had conveniently been standing far enough to the side to avoid getting hit. Jane stood soaked; only a few steps off from the sidewalk with a look on her face that could make anyone run crying for their mom.
The driver, having noticed what had just taken place, turned into a nearby parking lot and came walking over to where Jane was standing. She looked up at his face with eyes filled with anger. The driver appeared to be around nineteen to twenty-one years of age with jet black hair and intense brown eyes. He was about 6’4” and had a fairly pale complexion.
“Are you okay? Oh, gosh, I can’t believe I just did that…” he said as he approached Jane.
“I can’t believe you did, either,” Jane glared at him.
Unfalteringly, the boy continued, “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Yeah. Buy me something new to wear. This outfit is completely ruined!”
“Jane!” Andrew interrupted. “Be a little nicer, why don’t you? At least he came back to apologize.”
Jane stopped talking and bit her lip with discontent.
“It’s fine, sir. I should have been watching for pedestrians anyway, especially since the light was red,” the boy said. “I’m going to be moving into an apartment around here today and I was in a rush to get to there before 11 o’clock.”
“Oh, really?” Andrew said. “Where are you moving in?”
The boy gave him the address and Andrew burst out, “Well look at this! This apartment complex is a block away from where we live!”
Oh great, Jane thought while rolling her eyes.
“Wow, what a coincidence!” the boy replied, although he didn’t look very surprised. “My name is Raven Hunter,” he smiled and shook hands with Andrew. He then turned to Jane and held out his had which she hesitantly took. There was a spark of powerful energy that rushed into Jane as this happened, and it felt as if she had been shocked with a jolt of lighting. Her eyes protruded and her jaw muscles became firm. A smile of certainty spread across Raven’s face at seeing this. Jane examined his face carefully and noticed it. I don’t trust this guy, Jane thought.
Raven ended up buying Jane a new outfit to make up for the one he had ruined, and the three of them went to Lola’s Bakery to buy Jane’s birthday cake.
“Oh it’s your birthday today, Jane?” Raven asked as they walked up to buy the cake.
“Yup,” Jane answered while making no effort to look at him.
“How old are you turning?”
“Sixteen.”
“Happy birthday! You know, mine was just 2 weeks ago. I just turned nineteen.”
“Hm.”
“That’s great!” Andrew chimed in as he was handing the money to the cashier in an effort to ease the tension. “Happy belated birthday, Raven!”
“Thank you – So where are you guys off to now?” Raven asked as they were walking out of the bakery.
“We’re going back home to celebrate this grump’s birthday,” Andrew responded, pointing teasingly at Jane.
In response, Jane just turned her head with a hint of a smile and said, “We should get going. I want to have my birthday cake before midnight, thanks.”
“Alright. It was nice meeting you, Raven. Maybe we’ll see you around the neighborhood.” Andrew said.
“You can count on that.”
As both parties walked in opposite directions – Raven to his car, and Andrew and Jane towards home – Raven pulled out his cell phone. “I found her,” he said.
On the other end of the line, his father responded, “Be careful, Raven. Don’t take her lightly.”
“Of course.”
Back at home, Jane blew out the candles of her birthday cake.
“Happy birthday, Jane,” Andrew said patting her on the head.
“Thanks!” Jane’s eyes lit up. “It started off pretty badly, but everything turned out well in the end.”
“Thank god for that, right?” Andrew chuckled and proceeded to change the topic, “Go to bed early tonight. The weather says that there’s going to be a huge storm tonight. You won’t be able to sleep through that thunder with the ears you’ve got.”
“Gotcha,” Jane smiled and took another bite out of her birthday cake. A storm, huh? she thought as she looked out the window at the gray clouds forming in the sky.
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