Free A Way (The Voyagers Book 1) by Tara Lutz Page A

accompanied him on the two day wagon ride to bring the baler back from the city and every farmer in their town had rode out to their farm to admire it.  It was one of the many times they had went on a long trip together, but one of the only times they had an excuse.
    The sob came again as he noticed a few bales near the back, stacked against the wall, shake.  He went over to end their game and looked over the top of the hay tower.  Jessie was stuck between the heavy bales and the barn wall.  Her eyes were red from her face being pressed into the coarse grass and she had tiny scratches on what he could see of her arms. 
    She looked up at him with glistening, wide, blue eyes. “I’m stuck, ex, stuck.”
    If she could pull her arm up to her face, she might have started sucking her thumb, like any scared, five year old.  Instead, she pushed as hard as she could to topple the trap to try and free her tiny body.  Alex moved some surrounding bales in an attempt to reach her from the side.  She let out a muffled whimper when her leg wouldn’t budge.  
    “Can you push forward a bit Jessie?  Maybe at the same time I pull you?”  He grabbed her arm again.  “I’ll count to three.  I promise it won’t hurt”.  He gave her a smile, the most comforting one a seven year old could muster. 
    “Ready, Jessie?”  Her face scrunched up to get ready to strain against the thing pinning her against the wall.
    “One, two, three!”  He pulled, she pushed, and with only slight resistance Jessie was free.
    Sitting on the floor where she landed, inspecting her hay scrapped knees, she looked up at him with damp eyes.  He reached back into her hiding spot to grab her lace trimmed bonnet and dusted it off with his hands.
    “You found me, ex.” 
    Jessie still couldn’t pronounce his full name, Alex. He didn’t mind.  She was so little, he needed to protect her.  He stood her up, placed her hat over her blond curls and gently tied the strings, to hold it in place under her chin.
    “I will always find you, Jessie.”

Chapter 12
    Somewhere between turning thirteen, and winter turning to spring, Alex found it was not Gerald, his best friend, that he wanted to make the trek to school with.  It was Jessie.  His grin widened every time he entered the clearing at the end of the path from his house to hers, and looked up at the window, to see her looking back, giving him a quick wave.  He could picture her rushing down the stairs to give her sister, who she adored, a kiss.  She would thank her mother for her lunch, then give her a fast, but tight hug, goodbye.  Seconds later, the solid wood door would swing open and Jessie, her collie Duke following closely at her feet, would skip out of the house, over to him, and start in on a story that he just had to hear: he would never believe it, she had forgotten to tell him yesterday, pointing out clouds in the sky that looked exactly like a horse . She would barely catch her breath as she scolded Duke back to the house, if he hadn’t already been distracted by something in the barn. 
    The energy she had as a child had tripled, and while Gerald and Peter stumbled behind them and struggled to keep up, Alex floated along beside her.  He never took his eyes off her.  Jessie turned twelve that past winter and after years of looking up at him, she now hovered close to his shoulder, sometimes resting her head on it when she pointed up to the rabbit, cow or wolf shaped clouds.  She always carried more books than the three of them put together, reading a new one weekly. Along with her regular school texts, she carried a pad of paper to write her abundance of thoughts on, when they came to her.  Every day he offered to help her carry them.  Every day she declined.
    Sometime, over the years since the barn rescue, she had decided she liked calling him Dex better than his given name, Alex.  Then it caught on with the rest of his friends and was eventually adopted by his family.