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chapter nine: weeding the garden

( a/n: ik it doesn't rain this much in minnesota but shhhhh )

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With their project done and a day or two to go before they present it, Adam and Jamie find themselves, despite her fears, hanging out more. Normally, it's just the two of them hanging out in her bedroom or watching television in her living room. Sometimes, it's him trying to teach her to play hockey in his parents' driveway.

Today, it's weeding his mother's garden.

Jamie's crouched down by some tall plant, her brows furrowed as she pokes at a little green sprout.

"Okay, I have a question."

Adam, standing a few feet away in his smudged white shirt and jeans, stabs his shovel into the ground and leans on it.

"Go ahead."

"How do I know what's a weed and what's a baby plant?"

He cocks a brow, taking careful steps as he walks up to and leans over her.

"Oh, that? That's pigweed, you want to pull that."

She nods softly, tugging the pigweed up from the root, and he leaves her.

There's a long beat of silence as they work.

Jamie hasn't been in his yard since she was a kid and it's hardly changed.

"Hey...don't we have a time capsule buried somewhere around here?"

Adam looks up at her and nods. "Oh, yeah... I think it's over here."

He walks a few paces and pokes at the ground with his shovel, head cocked a little to the side.

"I know we made a map, but I don't know where it got to." She stands up, her legs shaking a bit, and wipes her hands off on her thighs.

She doesn't even know what they put in it.

"Oh, uh, it's in my room. I've had it pinned to my corkboard..."

Adam smiles sheepishly at her and Jamie breathes a laugh, smiling back.

"Well, we shouldn't dig it up, anyway. We said we'd wait until twenty-ten."

He looks down again, contemplating her words for a moment. "Twenty-ten? You and I could count to twenty-ten back then?"

"I could. You could barely do a thing without your two front teeth."

(In reality, she thinks she got it from Back to the Future and just added a few years.)

Adam scoffs, glaring at her without any real malice. She simply grins widely in response.

They return to their weeding, him doing much more work than Jamie does. She isn't quite sure just when Mrs. Banks got so into plants, but she wishes she didn't- this is one hell of a pain in the ass.

A rumble from the sky drags her from her bitter reverie.

"...don't tell me that was-"

Jamie couldn't even finish talking before the downpour started.

The rain very quickly becomes torrential and, abandoning their tools, the two teenagers book it for the house's glass sliding door. Adam tugs on it once, then twice, and then three times.

"Is it locked?"

"Apparently."

Getting absolutely drenched, she looks around as he frantically thinks.

She turns to the left. "The gate?"

"That's locked from the other side."

Cringing at the feeling of a raindrop rolling down her scalp, she sighs.

"...boost me over it."

Adam balks. "What?"

"Boost me over the fence!"

He stares at her for a moment, eyebrows furrowed, before sighing and shrugging.

"Sure, why not- c'mere."

Adam crouches slightly in front of the gate with his back to the wood and cups his hands in front of himself. She puts her foot in his hands, grabbing the top of the gate, and pulls up to the best of her ability as he lifts.

She swings her other leg over the top and, very gracelessly, drops down on the other side.

"Toss me the keys!"

Jamie hears a jingling and then catches his key ring as it comes over.

"It's the key with the red thing on it."

She nods, fumbling with the ring until she finds the red key and undoes the padlock. Adam, grinning, immediately slips through the gate and relocks it as she runs around and hides under the portico above his door.

He lets them in.

The both of them stand in the foyer of the Banks home, so wet that they're dripping.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Jamie tears her eyes off the eerily large painting of a young Mrs. Banks and turns to him. His hair is clinging to his forehead and his cheeks are slightly pink from the cold and excitement, his wet shirt clinging to his chest and stomach. Hockey. Good god the things that hockey had done. She swallows, trying not to stare.

She can no longer deny that her dorky best friend got really, really hot.

"Uh, yeah." She finally looks him in the eye. "Just cold."

Did she really just check him out- again?

"Let's go upstairs, I can give you some clothes and we can throw these in the dryer or something."

Jamie nods, following him up the stairs with chattering teeth.

In his room, he roots through some of his drawers before handing some to her. The two of them stand there and stare at each other awkwardly, not sure where to go from here.

"So... we'll both turn around."

She opens her mouth to tell him that she can just walk to the bathroom but he's already turning around and taking his shirt off. Rolling her eyes, her face hot, Jamie also turns around and starts shedding her wet clothes.

They fall to the carpeted floor with gross sounds.

"I'm, uh, ready when you are."

She nods as she pulls on some sweatpants, then cringes softly because Adam cannot see her.

"One sec."

Jamie tugs the jersey, his green one from peewees, over her head and then swivels on her heels. His back is still turned to her, and he's wearing a grey shirt and some red checkered pajama pants.

"I'm decent."

She runs a hand through her hair, making a face at how wet her hand gets, as he turns to face her and looks her up and down.

He then smiles playfully.

"Y'know, you look pretty good in my gear."

Jamie snorts softly, flipping him off as he laughs and picks up their piles of soaked clothes.

"I'll be back... feel free to look around."

She nods, watching him leave.

His room has changed as much as he has. Once blank walls are now covered with hockey posters and empty shelves are now full of trophies and awards; his desk is covered in schoolbooks, the wrinkled map to their capsule and pictures pinned to the corkboard on the wall above it.

A few things remain the same, such as the stuffed toy on his bed, but, other than that, it's almost unrecognizable.

"Hey... your clothes will be done in like forty..."

"Cool." Jamie hums absentmindedly.

She hears him walk up to her, and then feels his warmth before she sees him next to her.

"What's up, Jamie?"

She shrugs. "I don't know. It's weird. I know you like the back of my hand, but also not at all."

Adam's staring at her pretty intensely when she turns away from the poster that previously had her attention.

"...well, a lot of things happened after we drifted apart. I outgrew a lot of stuff."

"Yeah..."

"I didn't outgrow you, though..."

Jamie can't help but smile softly as he bumps her with his shoulder, a strange tugging sensation behind her navel weighing heavily on her mind.