Book One: Black Sheep

Jesse opened his eyes, and squeezed them closed again, tightly, against the bright sunlight. Blindly, he fumbled around in the inner pockets of his black leather jacket, found his sunglasses—the darkest pair of Nike sports shades rip-offs he'd been able to find and steal—and put them on. This time when he opened his eyes, the sunlight was only uncomfortable, not excruciating.

That only raised a whole new set of questions, though. Why was he under a tree?

Carefully, pausing a couple of times as the world spun under him in nauseating swoops, he sat up and looked around, squinting despite the sunglasses.

Trees, enormous ones, heavy on the evergreens, pine and cedar and whatever those other ones were called. Rocks, also enormous, smooth and almost flat, sloping up from the far side of the road at a gentle angle to a rusty wire fence and then more trees.

A road? Well, it was paved, and had a faded yellow line down the centre. No sidewalk or anything, and no signs or buildings as far as he could see from here—which wasn't much more than a hundred yards or so in either direction, because of the curves and the trees. There was no traffic that he could see or hear, either.

He sighed and buried his face in his hands. Must've had another blackout. God knew how far north he'd gone this time. Right out of the city entirely, from the looks of things, which was going to make getting home just heaps of fun. He remembered the party, the twenty or so other people who had made Michelle's small apartment feel even more cramped, remembered a lot of booze going around and that he'd had his fair share of it. More hazily, he remembered that as usual, as the air got rather smoky, it had made his too-sensitive sinuses burn far too intensely to ignore, and had finally triggered a violent sneezing fit. There was something there about feeling crowded, restless, trapped, an intense need to get away... Nothing else.

Great, I'm having blackouts at seventeen. Wonder if it's brain damage from getting smacked around too often. I mean okay, I drink sometimes, but not that much. Don't you have to, like, drink heavily for years before you get blackouts, or something?

Well, time to see how bad the situation was. He crossed his legs, and dug around in the pockets of his jacket to see what he had. Wallet with ID. The key to Shaine's apartment, nearest thing to home he had, sharing its ring with a miniature flashlight. Three twenty-dollar bills, which he didn't remember, along with a handful of change. Of the condoms Shaine insisted he always carry and always use, he only had one instead of three, which might explain where the money had come from, especially if he'd been hitch-hiking. And that was about it.

He swore softly to himself. It had been months since he'd tried to get through a day completely on his own, no pills to help him focus on something other than the despair and emptiness, no pills to help him sleep without the nightmares. He really had no desire to try again now, cold-turkey and off familiar ground. Possibly right off the bloody map. He was going to have to figure out where he was and get home as fast as he could.

He stowed everything back in his pockets and carefully levered himself to his feet, bracing himself against the tree with one hand. Once he was sure he'd stay vertical, he made his way carefully across the thick summer-green grass towards the edge of the road. A paved road meant there had to be people somewhere, in one direction or the other, right? He just had to guess at which direction.

At the very edge of the road, he stopped, closed his eyes, and concentrated. He was only half-conscious of his nostrils dilating, searching for any traces of human scent or the scents that came with human activity; he strained instead to listen for some kind of noise other than the incessant cheerful singing of birds.

He couldn't hear anything, but when he tested the idea of going to his left against the idea of going to his right, going left felt better. With nothing better to base a decision on, he went to his left.

Since there was no traffic, he walked right on the pavement. At least he was wearing his old well-worn comfortable black running shoes, and he'd astonished a number of friends and acquaintances before with how far he could walk—he just had to find that steady, ground-eating pace that took next to no energy. It was easier when he had music to concentrate on, but that wasn't necessary. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his jacket, and just walked, letting his mind toy with the possibilities of where on earth he might be until that got too scary, and he turned to imagining Shaine tearing strips off him verbally when he got home. At least once he was there for Shaine to yell at, he'd know things were back to normal.

The hum of an engine brought his wandering attention back to his immediate surroundings. He shielded his eyes with one hand, looked ahead and saw nothing, and turned to look behind.

Well, it wasn't anything large, but he could see something coming towards him, still quite some way off. Jesse shrugged to himself and went back to walking, rather than lose time, but he kept listening, and checked behind him periodically. Light-coloured car, no, mini-van, he decided. When it was close enough, he took a chance and stuck out a thumb.

The driver slowed down, and stopped just past him. The mini-van looked fairly new and in very good condition, nothing marring the antique-gold paint job. Preferring not to look too desperate, Jesse made for the passenger side quickly enough to look polite but without running.

The van's driver, and only occupant, was a woman in her mid-twenties or so with more vividly red hair than he'd ever seen as a natural colour—but given the lack of make-up and the simple off-white peasant blouse he could see, it just might actually be a natural colour.

She gave him a friendly smile. “Hi. This is an odd place to be out for a walk.”

Jesse spread his hands. “I was with a friend. At least, I thought he was a friend. We got in an argument about something stupid, he got mad and made me get out. If I'd realized his temper could be that bad…” He shrugged, let it go at that. Offering too many details would be more of a giveaway than acting reluctant to get into it. “Anyway, he left me kinda stranded.”

“Hop in. I'll get you at least as far as what passes for civilization.”

“That would be great.” He opened the passenger door, and the redhead leaned over to pick up a small cooler from the floor on that side.

“Here, just put that in the back out of the way. Help yourself to something to drink out of it if you'd like.”

“You must be my guardian angel.” He moved the cooler to the back seat, but couldn't resist, and chose one of the bottles of juice—grape came to hand first. “I'm Jesse,” he said, as he hopped up into the front seat and closed the door.

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Jesse. I'm Rebecca.”

“You live out here?”

“Oh, not too terribly far away. I'm on my way to meet a couple of friends for a camping trip.”

“Cool.” He fished around for something to keep her talking—most people were happy to meet a good listener, and Jesse was very good at listening. “I've never been camping, but it sounds like fun. Is there a campground or something?”

“No, just a place that we know of that no one really does anything with. It's a nice place to just set up a tent for the weekend and have a private party with a couple of good friends.”

He discovered, over the next ten minutes or so, that the friends in question were her two closest female friends and that she had the very sensible but unexciting job of being one of three employees of a small bank in an equally small town of a couple of thousand people. He was beginning to strongly suspect that he was much farther north this time than he'd been after his previous blackouts.

Why he always woke up to find out he'd gone north during those blank spots, he had no idea. South towards Toronto or someplace like that might have made some kind of sense, but north was just crazy. There was nothing up here.

He couldn't call the place they reached a village. It was just a little combined gas station and convenience store. Across the road was a house, as run-down as the store, the yard full of junk.

“I'm not sure if this counts as civilization,” Rebecca said, as they both got out of the van, “but it's the closest there is nearby, and at least there's a phone.”

“Thanks. I really appreciate the ride.”

“No problem. I enjoyed it.”

Jesse ventured cautiously into the convenience store.

To his intense relief, they had road maps for sale. He picked one up, chose a chocolate bar he hoped wasn't as old as some of the goods he could see in the store, and went to the counter to pay for them.

“Got your card?” asked the woman behind the counter, boredly. She looked about sixty, and that burgundy hair with the pale roots was definitely a home dye job. Somehow it fit with the frayed jeans and plaid cotton shirt.

Jesse gave her a confused look. “Sorry?”

“Your status card. If you want to skip the taxes, you need to have it.”

Status… oh. It wasn't the first time someone had taken one look at him and assumed he was Native—he'd been told it wasn't just the skin tone or the black hair, either, that something in the lines of his face suggested it too. Maybe he was. Who knew? Well, presumably there was a record somewhere of who his parents had been and what had happened to them, but he had no intention of dealing with the government any more than he absolutely had to, ever.

“Don't have one,” he said. “Don't worry about it.”

She shrugged and rang in the map and the chocolate bar. She shorted him on the change, but it wasn't by a lot and he didn't bother pointing it out.

“Can you show me on here where we are?” he asked her, tucking the chocolate bar into his jacket pocket for the moment.

She shrugged again and helped him unfold the map onto the counter. She scanned it intently for a long moment, toying with a red magic marker, then stabbed at the map, leaving a red dot that bled outwards into the paper. “'Bout here. There's the highway. We're not on there, but we're about twenty miles north from this one here.”

Jesse followed the so-called highway south with a finger. A long way south. And finally found the city.

“That's a bit over a hundred miles,” the woman said, watching him, and nodded to herself. “Yeah, about that.”

“I don't suppose anyone from around here goes that way very often.”

“Not on the weekend. During the week, y'get the odd one off the reservation goin' that way. That's about, oh, thirty miles north-east of here.” Helpfully, she showed him on the map. “We go down now and again for supplies, but we're not goin' again for a couple of weeks.”

Jesse groaned to himself. This was definitely not a good situation, no matter which way he turned it around in his head. That was a long way to hitch-hike on a road that didn't seem to get used much.

Behind him, he heard the door squeak open, and Rebecca came inside, followed by a man who was probably the husband of the woman Jesse had been talking to. They certainly looked like a matched set, although the man was largely bald rather than badly dyed.

“Oh dear. What's wrong, Jesse?”

Jesse sighed. “Getting home is going to be a bigger problem than I thought.”

Rebecca looked at the old couple. “How much for the gas?” She looked thoughtful while she paid, and when she finished she turned towards Jesse again. “You could come with me,” she suggested. “My friends won't mind, and the tent's big enough for one more. Maybe between us we can figure out a way for you to get home.”

Jesse hesitated.

Rebecca smiled. “Do you have any better offers than partying alone with three women overnight, having a decent meal, and maybe some help getting back where you came from tomorrow?”

Well, when she put it like that… “I think,” Jesse said, “that's an offer I can't refuse. Thanks.”

“Not a problem. C'mon, Moira and Avryl are going to wonder where I am.”

Prysmcat

This was written originally (and released as) a novel, so the chapters are occasionally a bit longer than ideal for this format. Where that's the case, I'll break them up into 2-3 parts.