“Hey, Jesse!”

Jesse didn’t expect to see Danny walk into the gift shop, but he smiled at the sight of him.

“Hey, Danny,” he said. “Doing some shopping?”

“I came out here with my dad to check out the place we bought,” Danny said, glancing around the store as he walked over. “It’s the building down the street that used to be a bookstore when we were kids. It’s going to need some renos and updates.”

They were the only ones in the store right now. Mondays weren’t usually busy and today was a holiday. Jesse had just been stocking the shelves and making sure everything was priced.

“We have setup and lots of planning to get started on…” Danny continued. “Seems dead in here.”

“It’s Labour Day. Holidays are hit and miss,” Jesse said. “Now that it’s September and school is back in session, things have slowed down.”

“Been at this a while?”

“About a year. The owner really likes me because I always volunteer to cover when someone’s sick or we’re short. It’s not bad.”

“Fair,” Danny said. “I’m going to stick to helping my parents out. I have no clue what I want to do so I might as well give them a hand, right? Seems like a good idea. Everyone wins.”

“Yeah,” Jesse agreed. “I have no idea what I want to do. I’m saving money for school until I decide.”

The truth was that he had wanted to make plans with Amber. When she was still alive, they talked about getting married and starting their lives together. Amber had been Jesse’s childhood crush. When he decided to ask her out at fourteen, everyone teased him about it. But Amber said yes. She always took him seriously. They’d dated. They were so happy together.

Until the fire.

Until Amber died and everything was cut short.

“I think you have the right idea,” Danny said. “I have no clue what I’m doing. It takes time to figure out what you want for the rest of your life, you know?”

“I do,” Jesse said. “It can be tough.”

“Yeah…”

Danny turned to him, and Jesse could tell that he wanted to say something. For whatever reason, he was hesitating. In the silence, Jesse pulled a few things forward on the shelf in front of him, working while he waited for Danny to speak.

“I hung out with Rion the other day.”

“Yeah?” Jesse asked, trying to ignore the immediate uncomfortable flip his stomach did. “How did that go?”

“Really, really weird.”

“How so?”

Danny shifted. He silently studied one of the display racks.

“I don’t really know how to explain it exactly…” Danny said. “He was at church, you know? So, we invited him to sit with us because he was by himself and afterwards, I went to his place. It was like… Rion offered chips and everything, and… His dad wasn’t home. He was staying overnight in the city or whatever.”

“Definitely weird,” Jesse said, turning to him with a small frown. “Now that you mention it, I barely ever see his dad. I mean, he was always busy with stuff when we were kids…”

“His dad pretty much just buys him groceries and stuff. Rion cooks and cleans for himself,” Danny said. “He’s living there all on his own with his dad gone, like, all the time. It’s mega weird. And when I asked him about the whole friendship bracelet stuff he was all, ‘I’m an asshole’. But he’s saying this after offering me snacks, inviting me over, and helping my family move and stuff, and… None of it makes sense.”

“Maybe it’s his way of dealing with things,” Jesse suggested. “I mean, he was there when Amber… Just look at Noa. Rion sounds like he has a lot going on.”

“But then why is everyone so mad at him?” Danny asked. “I just… I don’t get it.”

Jesse sighed. “Listen, I get that you want to talk. But I am working. Can we pick this up later?”

“Oh…” Danny said, and he blushed. “Yeah. I mean… Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m done in like half an hour. We’re closing,” Jesse said. “Can we talk then?”

Danny perked up again. “Oh! Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Actually, um… Mind if I grab a water?”

“As long as you pay for it,” Jesse said, gesturing to the cooler at the back.

“Of course! I think I’ve got a toonie on me,” Danny said, searching his pockets.

Jesse rang him through for the bottled water. Danny went to wait outside while Jesse began to wrap things up. Since it was just Jesse and his manager, the store owner, it didn’t take them long to close the store.

Jesse met up with Danny outside. He was sitting on a beaten wooden bench next to a couple of pines, flipping around his now empty water bottle in the air to entertain himself. Jesse sat down next to him and Danny set the bottle down.

“Sorry to bother you while you’re working,” Danny said.

“It’s fine. No one was there anyway,” he said, breathing in the fresh air. “Is your dad still here?”

“Yeah,” Danny said. “He’s busy. It’s going to take a while, you know? He’s checking out every angle of the building. That’s his thing. Said he didn’t need help.”

Danny was watching Jesse expectantly. He wanted to go back to their previous conversation. Jesse knew they had to talk about it, and he had a chance to reorganize his thoughts while closing up the gift shop. Still, he wanted to ease into it.

“Do you think you’ll be okay working out here?” Jesse asked.

“You’re working out here,” Danny pointed out. “If you can handle it, I think I can. Besides, we all have some great memories of hanging out here.”

That wasn’t why Jesse came here to work. It wasn’t the old, good memories that kept him here.

Some part of Jesse wanted to be as close to Amber as he could. She wasn’t here, not really, but she died here. He felt a connection to her out at the lake. He didn’t care that it was morbid or weird.

He didn’t explain his feelings to anyone. He didn’t feel obligated to. He wanted to be here and that was all that mattered.

“You can hardly tell there was a fire,” Jesse said. “They did a lot of development over the years. They planted a bunch of new trees and did landscaping. You almost can’t tell what happened.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “The Murphys’ old cabin is gone too, I hear. I guess they didn’t rebuild.”

“No, they sold the property. I don’t blame them.”

“Yeah… Yeah, it makes total sense.”

Jesse was silent for a moment and then he took a breath. “…Sarina found out about Rion’s friendship bracelet a week or two after you left.”

Danny shifted, looking at him. He was attentive but silent.

“She took it and showed us and said we all needed to talk to Rion about it,” Jesse continued. “The bracelet… It was cut up to bits. It was just a twisted knot of yellow and purple…couldn’t even recognize the pattern anymore…

“We got together and confronted Rion. It was… It was so frustrating. It was like he didn’t even care. He even said, ‘so what?’ after admitting to it. He was more upset that Sarina had gone through his room – even called her a bitch. I mean, that’s not a big deal now, but it was a big deal when he was a kid and none of us had ever heard him swear before.”

“She went through his room?” Danny asked with a frown.

“According to Sarina, she came over to his place to work on a school project,” Jesse said. “She said the bracelet was out in the open, sitting on the nightstand in his room.”

Danny was silent for a moment but then said, “Okay, well… Not to play the devil’s advocate or whatever, but…that sounds like a lie. This is Sarina we’re talking about. She went through my stuff more than once when we were kids. I always gave her a hard time about it.”

“I only know what she said,” Jesse told him. “It didn’t really matter at the time. We were already emotional and we… We got really upset. I can’t really remember what was said but I remember running off with Celeste.”

“Wait… All of you had a fight with Rion?” Danny said. “No, no… Back up. Who was all there?”

Jesse began to count off on his fingers. “It was me, Sarina, Peter, and Celeste. And Rion, of course.”

“So, all four of you ganged up on Rion?” Danny asked. “That’s kind of messed up.”

“We didn’t… No, we weren’t ganging up on him,” Jesse said. But now that Danny put it that way, he couldn’t help but wonder… “We were upset. We were trying to understand it. We went to talk to him. Or that was the plan, anyway. And Rion didn’t even care. He was so cold and callous and… It was like he was a completely different person.”

“Yeah, well, I’m in the same boat right now, trying to understand,” Danny said. “And I’m still not buying it. Rion won’t explain anything and he isn’t making sense. I told him that he could explain things to me when he’s ready and made sure he knew we were still friends.”

“Really?” Jesse said, cringing a bit. “You probably don’t want to hang out with him–”

“No, I do. I really do,” Danny said earnestly. “You didn’t see him. The guy looked like he was going to cry when I told him we were still friends. And when I mentioned Noa… You should have seen his face. I mean, look at the bigger picture, Jesse! Rion is living all alone, his dad is never home, and Sarina is running around giving him black eyes. I’m worried about him!”

Jesse felt guilty. Part of him didn’t want to consider it, but at the same time he couldn’t deny that Danny was making a lot of sense. Rion was isolated and dealing with…well…a lot.

“I’m sorry, Danny,” he said.

“I don’t think you should be saying that to me,” Danny told him. “I think you should be saying it to Rion. Like, at least tell me that you don’t think Sarina should be beating on him.”

“Well, yeah,” Jesse admitted reluctantly. “I don’t think she should be… To be clear, I’ve never actually seen her hurt him. People say he picks fights with her.”

“So?” Danny said. He was frowning at Jesse. “You’re saying that makes it okay?”

“I’m saying… I’m saying that I’ve only heard rumours and I’ve never seen anything happen,” Jesse said. “I can understand Sarina’s perspective, but she shouldn’t be hurting Rion. And Rion shouldn’t be picking fights. I’ve been trying to stay out of it.”

“What Rion did to his bracelet is upsetting,” Danny said slowly, watching him. “But it’s his bracelet. He can wreck it if he wants to, even if it hurts the rest of us. And picking fights… That’s no excuse to give Rion a black eye. I don’t care that Sarina’s a girl. That’s really wrong.”

Hearing it put into words made a painful lump form in Jesse’s throat. It made it hard to swallow.

“I don’t know if… I mean, is it really that bad?” Jesse asked. “This has been going on since… Rion doesn’t seem bothered by it.”

“If he’s having a hard time, do you really think he’s going to go talk to people that seem to hate him?” Danny asked. “I mean, come on, Jesse. Ever heard of a tough front? He used to have Noa to confide in but Noa is basically a wreck. Rion has absolutely no one. I’m one hundred percent convinced that he’s putting on an act and meanwhile he’s one bad day away from a breakdown.”

Jesse chewed on the inside of his lip. Danny was making a lot of sense, even though it hurt to hear.

Maybe he was right?

Jesse wondered if he’d just gotten used to things, if he’d spent the last six years turning a blind eye to something terrible. And it made him feel awful. He didn’t want to be that person.

“I mean, when you say it… Yeah, it makes a lot of sense,” Jesse was forced to admit.

“Yeah, it does. Because that’s what I’m seeing,” Danny said. “Maybe it’s because I was gone for so long and I’m coming at it with a fresh set of eyes. I don’t know. But I see all of this and I just feel… Like, can you imagine what Amber would think of all this?”

The words were a knife to Jesse’s heart.

Amber would have hated this. She would have been so against all of them fighting. Amber would have asked questions, like Danny. She would have wanted to understand. She would have tried hard to figure it out, she would have broken up fights… She would have done everything she could because Rion wasn’t just a friend, he was Noa’s best friend.

Jesse should have been doing that. He should have been looking into it. He should have done more…

But Rion was just so cold.

“…You remember when you asked me if you were an asshole the other day?” Jesse found himself saying. “Because you lost contact with the rest of us?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you’re definitely not an asshole. That might be me.”

Danny gave an overly dramatic roll of his eyes. “Jess, you are not an asshole, okay? Definitely not.”

“You’re right about Amber,” Jesse said. “And I’m kind of ashamed that I never thought about it like that. You’re right. It’s just… I’m really struggling to understand Rion’s perspective. I don’t get why he did what he did… Is it wrong that it still upsets me?”

“You think I’m not upset about it?” Danny said. “Those friendship bracelets were personal gifts from Amber. Of course, I’m upset. Of course, it bothers me. But I want to understand. That’s why I need to talk to Rion. Beating on him and chasing him away… That’s not going to help anything.”

“Yeah… God, I feel so stupid. Yeah, you’re right,” Jesse said.

They lapsed into silence. Jesse felt miserable. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen this sooner. Having Danny put it into perspective… It made him feel awful.

Even if he hadn’t seen Sarina do anything to Rion, there was no denying that Rion was completely alone and had no one to turn to.

“Why don’t you start from scratch,” Danny suggested.

“How so?” Jesse asked.

“Go say sorry to Rion,” Danny told him, “and then let’s work at it from there. Together. Yeah, I know, Rion and Sarina are still in high school, but the rest of us aren’t dumb kids anymore. We’re adults. Young adults, but still… We have to be at least a little responsible from here on out.”

Jesse gave him an awkward half-smile. “I can try but it’s going to be hard. I don’t know where to start or what to do.”

“Never said it would be easy,” Danny said, “but you wouldn’t be alone. I’m doing this no matter what. If we work with Rion, maybe we’ll get some answers and figure it out.”

“Okay,” Jesse said. “I can try.”

Danny nodded and then hesitated. “Just…uh…maybe don’t challenge him in Mario Kart.”

Jesse blinked. “Mario Kart? You played Mario Kart with Rion?”

“Yeah, and he seriously kicked my ass,” Danny said. “I have five brothers and I learned every gaming trick there is to beat them. But Rion…he’s scary good.”

Jesse almost wanted to laugh but he wasn’t quite up to it yet.