The Apocalypse (15 page)

Jake resisted the urge to throw something at her and instead seated himself on the opposite end of the teeter-totter Hannah had picked. "I guess not," he replied, kicking off from the ground. Hannah giggled and grinned, which was so pathetic to Jake that he had to smile. She was so easily amused that it made him want to laugh.

"Tell me more about being a kid."

Continuing the seesaw motion, Jake shrugged and studied Hannah. "I really don't know what to tell." A sudden thought hit him. "But I know you used to keep a diary. At least you did until you were about twelve." He grinned, forcing himself to appear sheepish. Secretly, however, he was pleased with himself; if Hannah still had that diary, it would spill the secret about them hating each other, and then he'd be off the hook of putting up with her. "I know because you decked me when you caught me and Isaac reading it."

Hannah laughed. "I didn't know that. Where'd you find it?"

Momentarily blank, Jake didn't answer, but then it came back to him. "It was in the most generic place in the world," he answered teasingly, rolling his eyes. "Between your mattress and box springs. But every time we looked for it again, we could never find it. Who knows if you even kept it after that."

"I bet I burned it," Hannah grinned broadly, revealing two neat rows of straight, white teeth. "It would have been
a
great way to deny whatever you read."

Although he had never thought of that before, Jake had to agree with her. "Knowing you, you probably did. You would have loved making sure that I could never see it again."

"I can't believe you read it!" Hannah made a face, though she was still obviously amused. "What kind of nosy jerk are you?"

Jake smirked. "Your favorite one."

"Oh, I'm sure." Hannah rolled her eyes, letting the sarcasm that Jake was familiar with roll off her tongue. Still, she didn't seem to be seriously angry. "If you're my favorite, there are obviously some slim pickings."

"Screw you!" Jake called in amusement. As the teeter-totter lowered on his side, Jake stood up abruptly so that, on the other side, the teeter-totter hit the ground under Hannah's weight, making a loud thud.

"Ouch! What did you do
that
for?" Hannah scowled and jumped up, rubbing her backside as though it would take the pain away quicker.

"Suck it up, baby."

Hannah's scowl deepened as she crossed her arms and kicked some pebbles in Jake's direction. "That really hurt!"

More amused, Jake almost smiled but kept his composure. "Stop being such a pansy. It didn't hurt that bad."

"It did so!" Hannah argued, walking toward him. She placed her hands on her slim hips and stared Jake down. He raised his eyebrows challengingly, and a smile began to show on Hannah's face. "Or maybe I've just got a really low pain tolerance."

Jake smirked. "I don't know about that. Your face is pretty painful to the eye, but you've put up with that pretty well for the last seventeen years, haven't you?"

Hannah's mouth dropped open, and she swatted her hands at Jake's torso rapidly. "Ha, ha, ha, Jake Allen. You're a real comedian."

"That's funny." Jake struggled to keep his smirk from turning into a grin and barely managed success. "Your diary said so too."

"Whatever," Hannah scoffed, her face heating up in a blush. Or at least Jake thought it was, although, to be fair, her cheeks
could
have been turning rosy from the cold and wind. She paused unexpectedly and inclined her head at Jake. "What'd my diary say?
If
it even existed."

Jake couldn't help but grin at the rebellious smirk that adorned Hannah's face. "It said that…that you were madly in love with the most hysterical, best looking, most intelligent specimen on Earth," Jake informed her, a cocky grin on his face. "And that would be me."

Laughing outright, Hannah rolled her eyes grandly. "I'm sure. Too bad there's no proof of
that
."

Unable to resist discovering any truth in Isaac's words, Jake tipped his head flirtatiously, widening his grin playfully. He was definitely going all out for this, moving completely into his flirty mode that had made so many girls fall for him throughout the years. "There's proof, Hannah. You're madly in love with me now. Why wouldn't you have been then?"

Hannah's arms stretched out and shoved Jake off his balance, nearly making him fall onto the white pebbles. He would have if he hadn't caught her hands to steady himself. Laughing softly, Hannah made a face at him and tried to pull her hands away. "You're so full of yourself!"

"And you're freezing," Jake said sweetly, giving Hannah's hands a gentle squeeze. "Let's go take advantage of that hot chocolate your mom promised."

Hannah jerked her hands away and started for the sidewalk, even as she scoffed and tossed her strawberry blonde hair. "I'm not letting you take advantage of my mother's niceness! You're a mean, horrible person."

Following along behind her, Jake rolled his eyes. "That you love."

"Not as much as you love me."

"I love you more than a root canal, I'll give you that much."

"Hey!" Hannah cried, giving Jake's upper arm a smack. "I don't know what that is, but I can tell you were being mean, jerk."

Jake held his hands up innocently. "I absolutely was not being mean, Miss Hannah. That's my word of honor right there."

Grinning, Hannah settled one of Jake's arms over her shoulders, taking him by surprise. "You don't seem like a very honorable guy to me, but I'll believe you if you do the honorable thing and keep a lady warm."

Thoroughly convinced that Hannah did indeed have a crush on him and being very highly amused by it, Jake let his arm rest over Hannah's shoulders and endured the intense longing to mock her more seriously. Instead, Jake pulled her closer in a flirty manner. "Yes, milady."

Hannah reacted by briefly laying her head against Jake's shoulder, and one glance at it made Jake want to crack up. If someone had told him that Hannah would desire bodily contact with him two weeks before, he would have only believed the person if 'bodily contact' was code for 'bodily harm.' Now that Hannah was practically snuggling against him, Jake appreciated the bittersweet irony. He just wasn't sure what he was going to do now that he saw it.

"For the love of God…"

Hannah sighed deeply and leaned back on her heels as she kneeled at her white dresser. She'd searched through every drawer in her bedroom, whether it be from her dresser, her chest, her bedside table, or her desk. Hannah had also rummaged through her closet—the floor, the wall of shelves, and the top rack above her hanging clothes. Her mattress had been raised so that Hannah's arm could slide around on top of the box springs, and she'd even searched her bookcase for any signs of her alleged diary, but there was nothing to be found.

Standing up, Hannah moved back to her closet and flung the doors open. She'd discovered a tidy stash of Oreos and Chili Cheese-flavored Fritos on one of the shelves, oddly hidden behind a row of paperback books and a globe. Tearing open the package of cookies, Hannah removed a few Oreos and nibbled on one while she thought of other places that a person might hide a diary. For all she knew, Jake had lied about it, but what reason would he have to do that? So if it was true…the diary had to be around somewhere! Possibly, anyway.

Bzzzz…bzzzz…

Hannah jumped at the sudden noise and looked around her bedroom warily. She'd heard that faint buzzing before, and she remembered that her cell phone was set to vibrate whenever someone called. Now if only she could remember where she'd thrown that stupid phone when her friends wouldn't stop calling…

After a moment of following the sound, Hannah lied down on the floor and reached under her bed to feel around, finally grasping the slim, purple Motorola Razr phone, which had been replaced days ago since her old one had been demolished in the wreck. She glanced at the caller id and nearly threw the phone back under the bed, but since it was Morgan calling, rather than Tisha or Libby, Hannah decided that she might as well answer for the most normal friend she had.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Han, what's going on?"

Hannah blinked. She hadn't talked on the phone very much at all, so she wasn't sure how literally she should answer that. However, she hadn't found the diary she was looking for, so she calculated an answer from that. "Nothing. What are you doing?"

"Well, I was talking to Tish awhile ago," Morgan replied cheerfully, "and we remembered that we'd all planned to go shopping today. Christmas is really close, you know, and we needed to finish up some stuff."

Furrowing her brow, Hannah suddenly wondered if she'd done any Christmas shopping before. She hoped she had because if she hadn't…she had no idea what to buy her family members—or if she even had a source of cash to by any gifts with. "Oh. Um, if I'd bought anything, where might I have hidden it?"

Morgan laughed. "As far as I know, you hadn't bought anything yet. You were procrastinating to avoid spending, like a big Scrooge."

Disappointed by not learning of a hiding place, Hannah consoled herself with the fact that she'd found out something else that she wanted to know: that she hadn't bought anything yet and that she did indeed have savings to spend. Thoughtful, Hannah knew her friends could help her decide what items should be bought for each of her family members. Nevertheless, it was very tempting to blow off the shopping trip, since spending time with the girls was not ranked very high on Hannah's list, but she remembered what Jake had said. If she blew her friends off now, she might regret it later, and with that in mind, Hannah replied, "Then I guess I should go shopping too."

"Awesome." Hannah could hear paper rustling for just
a
second, and then Morgan continued. "I'm surprised you're awake, honestly, but anyway, we'll pick you up around one, okay? I'll see you then."

The call ended, and Hannah stared at the digital clock on her phone.
10:38
, it read. She knew from lots of stories and some experience that Isaac couldn't be dragged from
his
bed before eleven o'clock, but apparently people expected her to be dead to the world for lengthy periods too. She shrugged and returned to her closet. Before she could return to searching for that missing diary, Hannah selected her shopping clothes—dark jeans and a white sweater—and headed for the shower.

"Have you ever noticed that, even as children, we're constantly looking for ways to get high?"

Isaac's question came as he and Hannah were watching home videos about ten minutes before one o'clock, which Isaac had carefully selected to make sure that no fights between Hannah and Jake would be shown.
That
had been a difficult task. He'd intercepted his sister when she was moving from the bathroom back to her bedroom, and Isaac had practically dragged her downstairs to the living room. His question was prompted by the images of little Hannah and even littler Isaac spinning around in circles in the backyard, trying to make themselves dizzy.

"I bet every stoner starts out like that," Isaac went on, reaching his arm to the coffee table to pick up his can of Mountain Dew, his necessity that accompanied waking up. "I'm shocked that both of us aren't on hardcore drugs."

"I'm not convinced that she's not. But if she isn't, she needs to be."

Both Hannah and Isaac looked up from where they were sitting on the couch and toward the doorway, where Jake had just entered from the foyer. Hannah took in his appearance—his windblown brown hair flecked with snow flakes, his black jacket lightly sprinkled with melting whiteness, his faded jeans, and his white sock-covered feet. As Hannah watched Jake shed his jacket to reveal a long-sleeved green Abercrombie t-shirt, she noted how remarkably handsome he was. She'd long ago learned to admire the brilliant greenness of his eyes, but his body wasn't a bit shabby, nor was his face.