Jem…Chapter 152

*Before…

SMASH!!!

And the sons of bitches hit the front passenger side of our van and messed up the fender and smashed some of the lights too.

I’m swearing and Rayne’s swearing at them in French as they peel out of there and I see the strobes of the town police as they pull in with two cars and the officers that are getting out are the same town clowns that were on scene at the accident.

Maybe that’s what’s actually getting me mad and upset the most right now is that I’m pretty sure they’ll be just as helpful as last time.

Or not…tears are rising and there’s this huge lump in my throat as I see Brooklyn just choke and choke on the hurt and then there’s a wail and she sinks hard down to her knees in the gravel and she breaks down and starts to bawl her eyes out.

She just had everything she’s worked and fought so hard for thrown in her face.

Most of us are in some kind of battered shape and the house is still vandalized and we still have the cops from town to deal with too.

I look around and I’m not the only one that’s crying either…Me, Molly, Carmen, Kim, Rayne…we’re all crying because…because she’s Brook, our Brook and how can you not?

*And Now…

I look at the cops and Uncle Mitch and Dad are heading over to them and I see one of them giving us a look like we’re troublemakers and not the ones that had stuff happen to us and he actually has a sort of sneer going on before he gets to my Dad and Uncle Mitch.

Yeah…well there’s a reason we call most of them town clowns for a reason.

I head to Brook who is hugging herself and she’s doing that bent over it hurts my insides crying thing and I drop to my knees to right in front of her as the girls are rubbing her back and she looks at me and she’s crying and filthy from the fight and I pull her into a hug and she starts to cry all over again.

It’s a shitty scary sort of a flashback to when I had done this before and I can feel her shaking just as bad as that time and I can tells she’s just sort of dropped right off the edge of things inside.

There’s a whole lot of us that just go like day to day and try really hard to not have the hard and horrible stuff that’s happened in our lives from jumping us and pulling us down.

There’s no sane way in hell that Brook wasn’t going to have this slam into her.

I’m not even sure of what I’m doing past holding her as tight as I can and rocking her back and forth and I’m humming to her.

Kimmie joins us and she gets down in the gravel driveway for this place and she holds onto Brooklynn too, Rayne’s on the other side and while Molly and Carmen are part of this too I see Molly wipe at her eyes and go talk to Mike and she’s checking on him.

Carmen wipes her face and she heads over to where Dad and Uncle Mitch are and we’re like that for a while and they’re talking things out and Carmen is showing the police things on her phone and they seem a little pissed that she had apparently taken pictures and they get on their radios and they bring in more cops and some are talking to the people at the gas station and the take-out place and someone takes pictures of the van.

And they called the ambulance for Mike.

No he’s not that bad but I guess they have to with it being the law or something.

That is what actually gets Brooklyn to stop crying for now and she stared for a few minutes at the EMT’s as they were checking Mike’s cut and have his shirt up and they’re applying bandages for it and say that they’re going to take him in for stitches.

She gets up and she heads over and we all do and they say that they want Brooklyn and Kimmie and Rayne to go in too and get checked out. The EMT’s say that and not the cops. But then cops or at least two of them are going with the ambulance while we‘re taking our stuff back and the other cops are going to investigate the scene of the crime and our place being vandalized.

Rayne gets the van started and the tire on the driver’s side goes scraaaaape and moves all wonky.

Dad comes over and he checks it out and they bent the tie-rod in the passenger side wheel and that’s just sort of icing on the cake really.

“I’ll head home and get the tow truck and we’ll take it to my place and we can get it fixed.”

I nod and I hug Rayne who’s not just upset over Brooklyn and the whole thing that just happened but this too.

Carmen says. “I got a lot of this on my phone; we can get this handled through insurance.”

Rayne nods. “Remy can you still handle it?” she’s just staring at it sort of hurt and numb and I can tell it’s a matter of both adrenaline and shock that’s going on with her. I pull her into me and I hold her around the waist.

Dad nods. “No problem that way you’re not fighting with a shop and the insurance asses.”

We wait around and we’re grilled by the cops again but it’s not the heavy asshole grilling and giving us a hard time like they want to do or they seem like they want to do especially with Uncle Mitch staying around.

Dad left and the cops decide that they’re going to escort of to the Hospital.

I text Dad to let him and Billy and Davey know.

Billy and Davey who somehow became invisible when the cops had shown up bikes and all.

Honestly when I thought about the kind of trouble I might get into as like the hopefully average teenager this wasn’t it. It was so not finding out that I’m a trans girl with a condition and that I’d be hiding from a sociopath from the richest family in the province or even maybe Canada or that I’d be getting into gang styled fights on the wrong side of town in the middle of the night.

Brooklyn is going in the ambulance with Mike so Uncle Mitch takes his car since he usually goes with Dad plus he takes Molly and Carmen with him. Rayne and I and Kim take Brooklyn’s car and then girls are all shaken up so I get in and hip-push Rayne over.

She looks at me. “You don’t have a licence.”

“Nope, but I can drive and you’re in no shape to you or Kim.”

“Angel I’m fine.”

I start the car. “And so am I and I wasn’t mixing it up.”

She looks at me. “What about the cops?”

“What about them? They’re way too full of all the stuff that happened and everything else to worry about who’s driving. And I’d rather it be me driving instead of one of you tow and having the post-fight shakes kicking in and us getting into another bit of trouble.”

She just looks at me and she goes to roll her eyes at me and I kiss her and I start the car and smile. “I know how to drive Rayne, I’ve been driving cars since I was a little kid actually helping Dad with stuff and even goofing off sometimes.”

Kimmie asks. “Goofing off you?”

“Yeah me, I mean it’s not like I had friends in school but there were always other kids sort of and older kids that were part of the families that dad knew and helped out and he always treaded off for stuff especially if they live off the well beaten.”

Rayne says. “You make it sound like there’s a whole lot of the around here.”

I look at them both. “Really there is, we’re off of the Southern Ontario branch of things girls and when you actually get out of places like Sudbury and Thunder Bay and other cities which aren’t that many really when you actually look at the province it’s all small towns and there’s a whole lot of off the beaten track.”

They’re both looking at me and I chuckle. “Really you’re such city girls.”

Kimmie nods. “Everywhere I’ve really ever been is like Toronto and stuff plus like out to Vancouver once and to Montreal one and the rest has been Harper’s Point and the trip we took to Sudbury.”

Rayne says. “Winnipeg here and I’ve been to Calgary once when I was little for the Stampede and I’ve been to Montreal and Quebec and Trois-Riviere with Summer and Toronto a few times.”

I grin. “Well I’ve been into Quebec a little bit but mostly Ontario and I’m sort of familiar with parts of Toronto and stuff but around here, locally and all up and down the coast for hours I’ve been Stompin Tom.”

Rayne asks. “Stompin Tom?”

Kimmie actually mimics him pretty well for a girl and she starts to sing… “I’ve been everywhere man, I’ve been everywhere man…”

Rayne says. “That’s Hank Snow.”

I look at her with interest. That’s sort of unusual for a French girl right?

Kimmie switches over to start singing…. “Oh the good ole hockey game!”
“Is the best game you can name!”
“And the best game you can name!”
“Is the good ole hockey game!”

Rayne looks pained. “Oh him and oh that?”

I laugh. “What you don’t like Stompin Tom?”

“I had a whole family of brothers and men and uncles and cousins so picture that song off key all the time while there was way too much Labatt’s going around and it’s sung all in Franglais.”

Franglais for those who don’t know is when French people speak a sort of French mixed with bits of English.

It’s partnered by Fringlish which id English with a lot of French thrown in but not enough to actually be close to being French.

I kind of chuckle though at how just put out Rayne sounds of the entire experience because it’s that and I can sort of picture that entire scene with her family in my head.

And I look at her and she’s still sort of staring at the cars ahead of us and the cops and the ambulance and I can tell this has been a rough night for her and for all of us too really especially Brooklyn.

But every time Rayne mentions her family I sort of want to do something sometime to maybe mend fences with her and her family.

I honestly think that summer might have very well made that whole situation worse with her and her family and that if she hadn’t taken off with Summer here that she might have mended some fences.

I kind of want to do that with her sometime.

But Brooklyn’s family seems like a whole write off. I mean even her mom from everything that I can tell is a real piece of work.

Molly’s too but I don’t know about Carmen’s and I don’t know about Kimmie’s either. He folks seem like they might be really stuck on themselves and stuff.

I pull in and we’re all in the side parking lot outside of the ER instead of going in through outpatients and that’s mostly because we’re with the police and stuff.

God I hate this place.

Mom died in here, I spent a lot of time when I was younger here and sick when I wasn’t in the Sick Kid’s Hospital in Toronto.

The smell is the same.

Antiseptic alcohol with this under scent of that sort of pseudo bleech cleanser and then there’s the smell of other things that are kind of the scent of people and that’s actually the smell of the dirty linens and other stuff that accents the air here.

I know where to go and what desk to see and the forms and stuff to fill out and I help the girls as best I can and it’s really…okay it’s really odd and surreal when Rayne and Kim both put me down as their emergency contact person.

I look at Rayne when she did that and she blushes and Kimmie even gives me a shy smile and it’s not even a thing really about my I.D.’s really but it’s this kind of big very real step when Angel Benton is just that the emergency contact person for two people that I love.

It’s a very real and serious thing as much as it’s just a thing.

Though Rayne and Kim both not having next of kin to put down or not willing to put down has me kind of thinking maybe about seeing about all of that.

Maybe something if they won’t with dad and stuff because he’d definitely be willing.

Rayne’s okay just a few bruises but she does request a female RN if possible and the ward clerk gets what she means by that and it’s actually not a problem and Kimmie has a bunch of cuts on her hands from the fight but nothing serious either, though she is so not happy about the stuff they use to clean the cuts out with and I can hear her swearing in Japanese.

And it’s hard not to laugh because she’s retelling the story of the fight and what happened but she keeps referring to the other girl the entire time as the “Bog-troll.”

Brooklyn didn’t get off so lightly with serious scrapes to her arms and her calf and both knees and she has a cut lip and lots of bruises. She looks pretty bad and she looks upset and that’s not helping in this place with the lights washing her out here.

And she’s sticking close to Mike who’s literally fine for all of the fighting that he did and a cut that they gave him four stitches for and a slather of polysporin antibiotic salve and a large bandage and told him to come back and get the stitches taken out in a week.

And he was kind of almost a baby because they made him get a tetanus shot.

It was such a relationship thing to watch too with Brook almost being pissed at Mike for being so well off as it were but still he got cut and needed stitches and it was like she was mad about all of that too and then slightly mollified by him having to get a shot which he hated more that the rest of it.

It was definitely a relationship thing and it was definitely odd for me too since I seen some of it as I went around and just sort of checked on people and bought coke’s from the vending machines and there was this whole odd feeling of Mike being hurt and Mike being the first boy that I kissed and that we were an almost sort of.

That’s odd to feel that way.

This is just one weird and bad sort of screwed up night.

And then with a final recap with the police and the doctors we’re cut loose and we all head back to Dad’s place.

The lights are on at the house and the garage and I can see Dad in the window of the house because he’s in the kitchen and we all park and we get out and I notice an absence of bikes here too and I hope they’re alright and everything.

We make our way into the house and Mike’s sort of arm in hug with Brooklyn and she sees Dad and she starts to sob and to cry again and she’s looking at him and she just lets out this sort of girl sobby heart breaking whine.

“Why!?”

“Why can’t they just not be horrible!?”

“Why can’t they just love me!?”

It took all of like two seconds for Dad to be there and to sweep her up into this great big Dad hug and she’s sobbing really hard, hard enough to get all of us started too and he walks just as far as his big easy chair and he plops into it with her and she’s crying so hard all over again.

And Dad’s just so being Dad as he squeezes her really tight.

“I don’t know Brooklyn but the whole lot of them are missing out, they’re damned fools if they don’t have the brains to see what an amazing person you are and I am So Happy that you came into my life.”

(Sniffle-sob.) “You are?”

He hooks her little finger with his again. “Yeah, like forever and Always kiddo you’re family, all you girls are family you always will be.”

Brooklyn looks at him and she just cries, it’s that crying where all that can get out of you is that painful wet whine because you’re heart and inside are crushing you and hurting so much from all of that pain that’s bottled up.

And I lose it myself because all Dad does is when she looks at him like that is kiss her on the forehead and says right to her face. “I Love You Brooklyn, I Love You.”