FOUR MONTHS LATER

IT HAD BEEN HARDLY A THIRD OF A YEAR, AND SHE WAS ALREADY PREPARED TO RUN JARED CAMERON OVER WITH A CAR. Sure, as her aunt had said, he meant well. But she whole-heartedly wished that he would mean well somewhere else so that she could be alone and at peace with her recreational coping activities.

For whatever reason, he had taken it upon himself to watch over her like an overprotective parent with a thoughtless toddler. He was infinitely walking up and down the street when she would sit on the front porch. Hiking the same trails she would take when heading up to the cliff she'd found herself at all those months ago. Walking home the same time she would after school, no matter what time she left.

Whether it was out of the goodness of his heart, or sheer pettiness, she wasn't sure. But Sara was ready to kick him in the dick so hard he'd never be able to have children.

She'd told Gayle about it, after the first couple days, and while she found it to be quite entertaining, the offer to tell him off was real. But Sara had begrudgingly admitted he was harmless. Annoying, yes; but harmless. She'd dealt with worse kids in her old neighbourhood. So her aunt simply said that she wouldn't step in until she asked her to, which she appreciated.

She liked being able to make that choice.

What she truly found infuriating was when he'd mother-hen her at school. If she had a class with him, he would annoy her desk partner into vacating the space so he could take over. He would constantly blabber away about fuck only know what as she didn't pay him any attention.

Between classes was a whole different story.

"Mind your own god damn business," Sara snarled at the figure following after her.

"I'm just saying," Jared snorted as he quickly caught up to her. He'd grown an annoying amount in the last couple weeks. "If John Hammond had really thought things through, he would've looked at all the dinosaur DNA they'd found and gone hmm, maybe this is a really stupid idea, you know? Maybe we shouldn't—"

"For fucks sake," she muttered to herself, then ducked into the library. Her next class was art, anyway, so she didn't care if she skipped it or not.

The moment she passed the front desk with him still babbling behind her, the librarian was out of her seat demanding to know where a textbook he'd taken out the previous year had gone. Grinning to herself, Sara quietly went down two isles until she was in the supply closet at the back wall, and closed herself in.

She sat down and made herself comfortable in the crook of the wall behind a shelving unit stacked with boxes until she was nestled in her usual spot. In her corner over time, she'd accumulated a thin blanket someone had left in the lost and found, a battery operated light she'd snagged from the science room, and a cushion from home economics.

From her bag she grabbed the wooden hoop holding a stretched piece of fabric within it, as well as a trio of thread colours. She'd only been able to get green, blue and purple. So, she embroidered little stems of lavender into the fabric.

While it definitely wasn't the best place to do crafting, she whole-heartedly admitted that, it was the only place she'd felt quite this safe in a long time. So every day, for as long as she could after school, she sat in the little closet with the borrowed light on and poured all her time and effort into this one little circle of peace she had for herself.

Sure, there would always be safer places. But Sara truly pitied anyone who attempted to get past Mrs Daria at the front desk. Especially if they had overdue books. In her small town, everyone knew everyone's name so it wasn't hard to put a face to it.

For over two hours she sat there, pushing the needle through the fabric while occasionally muttered curses as she pricked her fingers. She just wiped the little plooms of blood on her pants and carried on.

Eventually, though, she had to pack up her things. Dan the janitor knew she spent her time in that closet and would leave one of the back doors propped open with an old worn out bucket for her so she could leave when she was ready. So she went to the door he always left for her after tucking her things away, and gently pulled it closed behind her. That way, Dan wouldn't get into trouble.

Her walk home went as normal as it always did, with fat raindrops splattering themselves on the sweater she was wearing and leaves fumbling across the gravel roads around her. The occasional truck or car passed by her, going whatever speed they pleased as it wasn't really monitored in their small town, and part of her contemplated jumping in front of them just for the fun of it.

But she was too tired to do so, so she didn't. She just stayed on her path, the grey rocks crunching under her feet until they turned into the grassy much of her front lawn.

Gayle was off at work, as she always was on Wednesday afternoons, and wouldn't be back until later that night as it was her 7AM to 7PM shift of the week. So she unlocked the front door, dumped her bag on the couch, and grabbed a pair of thick faux leather work gloves.

Along the left side of the house, shoved up against the chipping paint was a stacked wall of firewood. It was still relatively cold out as it was the beginning of March, and her aunt was someone who could drink coffee in the middle of summer. Not that it was overly warm in the summers there; it was just comfortable. The wood stove in the living room was the perfect heat source for the small home, as the warmth of it drifted down the hallways and steamed up the windows on cool days.

Sara grabbed the wagon from the shed in the back yard and hauled it around the side of the house. Then she slid on the gloves, and began piling. The exertion of it was enough to make her take off the sweater she was wearing, and she carried on anyway.

She took a breather half way through, comfortably seating herself on a piece of wood that would have to be split in order to fit in the fireplace. The clouds overhead sent a slight drizzle down periodically as if they couldn't make up their mind but were considering opening up into a downpour.

So she set to work with her stacking into the wagon and hauled two loads into the garage before deciding she wasn't going to do anymore. It wasn't long after she'd gotten inside that the rain fell, and a mere quarter hour after that she was watching Jared Cameron walk up the gravel road.

She smirked to herself.

The hood of his sweater was drawn up to cover his hair, though it wasn't doing much to keep the rain off him. His shoulders were pulled up to his jaw as if to fend off the cold she'd managed to avoid.

Briefly, she felt guilty. But he'd invaded her personal space several times since she'd arrived without any kind of invitation to do so, and that feeling quickly trickled away with the rain.

Sara yanked the curtains closed and wandered into the kitchen. She grabbed an apple from the fridge and sliced it up, got the jar of peanut butter from the cupboard along with a knife, and set herself up in front of the TV. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit was on — a show she'd begun watching with Gayle — so she pressed record and watched only for a moment to see Olivia Benson crack down on a suspect in the interrogation room.

It had been because of an officer like her that Kevin Ryce had been put away for what he'd done to her as well as the drug charges. Officer Dana Peters had put in dozens of hours of overtime to create a line up of the events that had taken place in her childhood, all of them horrifying. Sara had hated talking about them, hated mentioning them at all, but knowing that they would be what landed him in a more horrible place than she ever could kept her going.

She settled herself into the couch and switched the channel until she landed on some kind of romantic comedy that involved a short brunette woman and a muscular blonde man hating each other before falling in love.

"Go figure," she muttered, but put the remote down anyway.

The channel always played the same movies at the same time for a week before switching it up, so for the last handful of days she's caught bits and pieces of the same one. All she knew was the woman had lied about her past — of course — and the man was some kind of ex military person with severe PTSD but was head over heels in love with her. Or something like that.

She felt it was utter bullshit, but the story was easy enough to follow that she kept it on to waste time.

A faint scratching at her back door had her pausing the show to figure out what it was, and she just shook her head. A stray cat had been wandering around the block for a while now, and though she had originally tried to offer it food, all she'd gotten was a miserably long scratch down her forearm that left a faint scar.

So she decided that when the cat wanted something it would find a way to ask, as it apparently was now. Sara padded over to the door and swung it open. The little menace was dirty, its black fur caked in mud and something else as she tried to climb up the back steps while heavily favouring its right leg.

Its belly was swollen and her eyes looked so tired, as if she just wanted to sleep and never wake up again. Sara knew that feeling. So she knelt down and moved a hand to help the animal up the stairs, only to have claws swiped at her hands. She cursed, stood up, and stormed inside.

She left the door open, in case the damned thing managed to convince itself it was safe, and grabbed an old blanket from the linen closet. It was mostly used as a tablecloth for crafts, anyway. Then she grabbed a blue recycle box from the garage and made her way onto the back deck again.

The animal was now up against the house with its chest rattling for breath. Sara frowned. After putting the blanket at the bottom of the box, she set it down and ignored the swats and scratches she received as she lifted it and set it downs on the cloth. "Fuckin' thing," she grumbled irritably as she then straightened up and inspected her wounds.

Only a quartet were bad enough for her to worry about infection, and even then she didn't worry at all. She'd clean them out in the shower later, anyway.

What made her more worried than annoyed, however, was after a quick glance in the bucket she could see that the unknown substance that had been covering the cat was blood. It was slowly staining the blanket beneath its leg, and had crusted into its fur.

From there, she did the best at googling how to help the animal that she could, only to find that the nearest veterinary hospital was over an hour away. She wouldn't be able to go anywhere until Gayle got home, and even then her aunt would be exhausted.

She had only spoken to one other person on her street that she knew had a license, and it was really even a conversation at that. It was the same situation she'd just been in, but she was the angry, hate-filled cat and he was the human trying to put the dumb thing in a box.

After bristling at the realization that she'd called herself dumb, she swallowed her pride and kicked her feet into a pair of green rain boots and hauled the recycle box into her home. She ensured the creature wouldn't move, and then ducked out of her house.

Sara stuffed her hands into her coat pockets and stalked down the driveway, eyes staring straight forward. She passed her neighbours house, then the next one, then the one after that, and continued on until she had passed another 9 houses and was then standing at the corner.

The blue one story house was simple, framed with plants and had large rocks outlining the pathway leading up to the front door. The street sign was on the far right corner at the front, the strewn names sticking in their purposeful directions. An old truck sat in the driveway, which she was thankful for.

Even if she wasn't thankful for what she was willing to do in order to save the damn cat.

Sara walked up the front porch and only hesitated a moment before knocking. When the door opened, Jared Cameron looked undeniably confused but his eyes widened the moment they landed on her. She didn't give him the opportunity to talk. "You seem intent in pissing me off, so make yourself useful while you do it. Hurry up; before I change my mind."