First Real Kiss

Chapter 9

Sheridan

“Jasper, Jasper, Jasper.” I dragged my finger down the page of the third journal tonight. It was past midnight, and I had five clients to meet tomorrow, and then a few community service things going on, so I should rest up, but I had to see if there was anything written down anywhere in my diaries about the dog.

Nothing here.

And nothing in the other two journals I’d kept as a teenager, either. I’d quit journaling about the time Case and I got married. The happily-ever-after part is boring, right? That’s where the story ends. No reason to chronicle the simple joys of blissful togetherness.

Humph.

Frankly, I could have written a six-volume memoir about the things I went through in the first two years after I married Case Chandler, but I’d turned to other methods of finding catharsis.

Like getting all the required training to become a certified life coach.

I set aside the useless pink journal with the elephant and picked up an earlier volume, the one from when I was about thirteen. Twenty years ago, could I have wanted a Brittany spaniel and written about the name Jasper then?

Probably not, but I do know it was a long time back that I’d decided on the name because when that movie about sparkly vampires happened I wanted to call up the writer and chew her out for stealing my favorite name and putting it on a blood-sucking undead hottie.

My dream dog should have a pure name. Free from the contamination of vampires.

Considering my ranting tendency had manifested so early, my chewing out skills obviously weren’t super newly acquired—nor had they been solely triggered by The Menace Named Luke Hotwell. Maybe he was a mind-reading sparkly vampire just waiting to bite.

Ugh! How could he possibly know so much about me? A cold chill ran up my spine. I shivered it off and cracked open the last of my journals, the brown one with the bright red and orange flames painted on the leather.

Ah, coincidental, considering the events that filled its pages. Yes, there’d been a lot of quakes here in Torrey Junction, even some recent. That was the price we paid for living right on a huge fault line. But we were also right on the ocean, and we had the best beach, the best weather, the best growing season, the mildest winters. Most of us were willing to take the occasional risk. With risk comes reward.

But with risk also comes … the chance of great loss. The library had collapsed, as well as part of a shopping center, and about a dozen homes.

Maybe I’d jinxed my life by choosing that particular notebook as my journal—since this was the chapter of it which ended in dirt and flames and … yeah. Destruction of pretty much everything I’d dreamed of for my life.

Expectations. They’re a burden when based on variables out of one’s control. I tell my clients this fact all the time and more or less pound into them the notion that expectations are nice but we can’t allow unmet expectations to turn us into bad versions of ourselves.

Hello, speaking from experience here.

Like one of those brain-dead zombies wandering a destroyed town, I opened that journal to the pages prior to the fated event. Good job, thirteen-year-old me, recording everything that happened to me leading up to the day of the Great Quake—for contrast.

Nothing had been the same for me ever again.

I lifted the leaf to the page where I’d recorded everything about the Great Quake.

The Great Quake. So many families had experienced even more suffering than mine. At least I still had my life.

Thanks to that guy.

Who was he? Where was he now? Did he ever think about me?

July 7

I’m going to be in the hospital for a while, and almost nothing happens here other than daytime TV and a lot of visits from doctors and therapists, so I won’t have a lot to write about in here. So boring. But I can at least write what happened that day.

Definitely not boring.

It was a rainy day, almost dark because of the cloud cover. I was at the library for the summer reading program. Oh, look at me—ready to read fifty books this summer! I had a whole bunch picked out and I was at the desk. Not a lot of other kids my age were in there. They must have had things to do like go swimming with friends or babysit for money for cute school clothes, but I was getting my second batch of ten books.

The librarian said she’d be right back. She needed to check something.

That’s when the tremors started. Not like I didn’t know what they were. This is Torrey Junction. We’re pretty used to them.