Dare to Fall

by Estelle Maskame

  Stepping into the room, I meet Mom’s awaiting gaze and inform her, “It’s only Holden.” As I say his name, he places his hand against the doorframe and leans forward enough to let Mom see him. However, he doesn’t come into the room.

  “Hello, Holden!” Mom greets him with a warm smile, and she appears grateful for the distraction. Holden showing up is apparently better than my suggestion of having her draw something.

  “Hey,” Holden murmurs with a small nod. He doesn’t smile back at her or look at her for longer than one second. He drops his hand from the frame of the door to my elbow, and carefully but quickly he tugs me back out into the hall with him. This is weird, and I’m not exactly sure what’s going on. Holden towers over me, dark eyes on mine, his cold fingers still on my arm.

  “Can we . . . can we go out back or something?” he asks, his voice nothing more than an anxious whisper.

  There’s something hugely off about him right now, but I’m not sure what and I don’t know why. Holden can be moody, sure. Hell, he’s grouchy most of the time, anyway. But this tense? This nervous? This isn’t Holden.

  “Um. I guess.”

  I shake his grip off me and turn for the kitchen. It’s in darkness, but I don’t bother to switch on any lights, and instead I head straight for the back door while Holden follows close on my heels. I hear his breathing deepen as I unlock the door and pull it open, allowing the fresh, cool night air to hit us. I walk over to the old wooden table and set of chairs in the center of the yard. It’s not too cold out tonight, but there is a small breeze in the air that blows my hair across my face.

  I press my hand against the back of a chair and turn around to face Holden. He has stopped a few feet away from me again, almost as though he’s afraid to come any closer, and his dark eyes have grown wide and fearful. “Is everything okay, Holden?”

  Holden’s eyes close. Slowly, he shakes his head back and forth, hands balled into fists inside his pockets. “No,” he whispers. Even though it’s not cold, his breath is visible in the air and it seems his breathing has become shallow. His eyes flicker open again and he reflects my panicked stare, then exhales deeply and states, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What?” Holden is never, ever like this, and the panic that is quickly sweeping through me sends me into a fit of desperation when he doesn’t immediately reply. Stepping forward until I am standing directly in front of him, I beg: “Holden, what is it?”

  Swallowing hard, he sinks lifelessly into a chair and I quickly sit down next to him. I’m worried now, and I need him to say something. I need him to answer me.

  “If you’re serious about Jaden Hunter,” he murmurs, “then you need to know. I have to tell you.” He tries his best to meet my eyes, but I can see it’s difficult for him. “You need to know why I can’t be around him and Dani, not unless you want me to explode. I can’t . . . I can’t bear it.” He shakes his head fast and drops his gaze back down to the grass again, unable to look at me. “It’s too much.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Being around them makes the guilt unbearable,” he says to the ground, voice quivering. He releases his interlocked hands and throws them back into his hair, roughly running his fingers through the ends. Why won’t he look at me?

  “Guilt?” I echo. I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Holden?”

  “The Hunter crash, Kenzie!” he blurts out. I still don’t understand, so I only stare blankly back at him with my heartbeat thumping against my ribcage. Holden leans forward, his dark eyes full of terror as he continues. “Do you remember the final report? They swerved off the road because they think an animal ran out on the road in front of them.” He pauses for a brief moment to take a deep breath, and it’s only then that I notice he is trembling—and it’s not because he’s cold. “But the cops were wrong. There were no animals on the road that night,” he whispers, voice cracking, face paling. “But I was.”

  28

  I can feel the weight of Holden’s words crashing down on me. They repeat over and over again in my head until I can make sense of them, until I can figure out what exactly it is that he’s telling me. Seconds of suffocating silence have passed by the time I process it all, and this new information is like a punch in the gut.

  “You were there?” I hiss in disbelief, blinking repeatedly back at him.

  “It was back at the time of football camp,” Holden blurts out, his words spilling from his mouth so fast that I can hardly keep up. He is shaking even harder than he was a moment ago. “It had been such a long, long, shitty day and I was so tired. I wanted to go out for a drive just to clear my head. God, I thought I’d take the country roads, because I knew they’d be quiet.”

  With his arm still propped up on the table, he presses his forehead into his palm and squeezes his eyes shut again, his face angled away from me. I can’t bring myself to speak. All I can do is listen in frozen horror, willing Holden not to tell me what I think he is going to tell me.

  “And the roads were quiet,” he murmurs. “And I was just . . . just driving. And it was dark, and my music was playing, and I don’t really . . . I don’t really remember anything.” He throws his head back to the sky and parts his lips, blowing air out of his lungs while slowly opening his eyes again. His chest is rising and falling with his heavy breathing, and now his lower lip is quivering. He tilts his head down so that his pained, terrified eyes can meet mine, and my stomach twists even more as bile rises in my throat.

  “I was so damn tired, but I was only gonna drive to Fort Collins then head straight home,” he continues. His crushed expression is laced with guilt. “I guess I . . . I guess I dozed off.” His entire face is so pale that it makes him appear sick, and he freezes, locking his eyes on a spot somewhere over my shoulder. The corners of his eyes crinkle as the guilt consumes him and he presses his hand over his mouth, as if to keep in the truth that is falling out of it. “And all I remember is the sound of this car horn cutting straight through me and opening my eyes,” he whispers against his palm. He begins to shake his head again in disbelief, faster and faster, as though he doesn’t want to believe it. “I was just so tired. I shouldn’t have got in the fucking car!” he yells, but his voice is so weak that his words are nothing more than a coarse squeak. He moves both his hands to the top of his head, interlocking his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t even realize,” he breathes. “I slowed down a little and checked my rearview mirror, but I couldn’t see anything, just blurry tail lights.”

  He looks up at the sky again, but I still notice him blinking fast in an attempt to hold back the tears that are fighting to break free. “I just carried on going. I wasn’t thinking straight, I just . . . ” His words dwindle into silence, hanging unfinished in the night air. “I heard about the crash the next morning. But the Hunters didn’t swerve to avoid an animal, Kenzie,” he whispers. “They swerved to avoid me.”

  A long, numb silence follows. For what feels like hours, I watch Holden’s tears drop onto the grass across the chasm that has suddenly opened up between us. Neither one of us is brave enough to speak.

  My entire chest feels as though it’s collapsing. What was Holden thinking? Why is he only telling me this now? There is so much running through my mind that it is impossible to think straight. All I can do is press my hand to my chest and whisper, “Oh, Holden.”

  The bile in my throat continues to rise and I quickly slap my hand over my mouth to stop myself from throwing up. Opposite me, Holden is trembling. He can’t bring himself to look at me right now, and he presses both hands to his face and hunches over, burying his head between his knees.

  I can’t look at him either, so I force myself onto my feet and walk away from the table, my hands pressed to my temples. There is a throbbing, agonizing pain at the back of my head. I don’t want to believe this. I can’t believe this. Suddenly, I become lightheaded, and the back yard begins to spin around me as an awful dizziness takes over my body. Fearful that
I might collapse, I quickly drop down onto the lawn, pressing my hands against the grass to steady myself. “Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask Holden, but my voice is a whisper. The back of my throat hurts as I fight back the tears. How am I going to tell Jaden and Danielle?

  “Because I didn’t want to get into trouble,” Holden admits through a muffled cry against his hands. He doesn’t sound like himself anymore. He sounds like a child, weak and vulnerable, everything that Holden usually isn’t. “I didn’t know what would happen to me,” he says quickly, lifting his head slightly. He looks at me beneath his damp eyelashes, his eyes swollen. Suddenly, he begins dry-heaving. He stands up from the chair and bends over the table, one hand pressed against it for support, and retches so many times I’m surprised that he doesn’t throw up. I feel frozen stiff as I look up at him from the grass. A pained numbness begins to take over as the reality of the situation sinks in.

  “Holden . . . ” I whisper. “They need to know.”

  “No!” Holden yells. He immediately straightens up, breathing so heavily that it’s almost panting, and he wipes away the tears from his cheeks. “No,” he says again, this time quieter, softer. He stares down at me with desperate eyes and I can’t bear to look. “Please, Kenzie,” he begs. “It was an accident.”

  “You can’t expect me to keep this from them . . . ” I trail off, blinking up at him. Did he expect me to do that? Holden can’t burden me with this secret. I refuse to carry the weight of it, and he can’t expect me not to tell Jaden. It’s Jaden. I have to.

  He runs his hand back through his hair again, taking several cautious steps across the lawn toward me. When he reaches me, he crouches down and reaches for my wrist, his dark eyes mirroring the panic in mine. “Kenzie, listen to me,” he says. “I’m going to ride this out. Once we all head off to college, we can start over. We’ll have separate lives; it’ll be easier then. Once we all leave this place, it’ll be over. I can still have a future.”

  “Holden,” I whisper, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  He reaches for my other wrist and pins them both against his chest. I can feel his heartbeat thumping erratically beneath his skin, even faster than mine. “I’m your best friend. You have to keep quiet about this. Please, I am begging you, Kenzie. I can still get into college, I can make something of myself.”

  I look straight back into his eyes, analyzing the pain and the hurt within them, the guilt and the fear, the dread and the nerves. I don’t know this Holden. “I . . . I don’t know if I can,” I finally say, shaking my head at him. Do I keep this secret to protect my best friend, knowing that I’m keeping the truth from Jaden? Or do I tell Jaden, but destroy Holden? I feel a single tear rolling slowly down my cheek. No. This isn’t about who I want to protect. This is about what is right, and what Holden asks of me is too much. I can’t keep this quiet. Jaden needs to know.

  Holden physically deflates in front of me, his shoulders sinking, his chest falling. Gently squeezing my wrists, he releases his hold on me and stares into my eyes in silence. He doesn’t say anything, he only nods once and begins to walk away, dragging his feet across the lawn.

  I can’t believe it was my Holden who was there that night. My Holden who was on that road. My Holden who is responsible. And despite all of this, I can’t help but feel like he is still my Holden. He is upset right now, and the last thing I want is for him to feel alone.

  “Holden,” I say gently, following him. I don’t want him to leave, not when he’s like this, not after everything he just told me. I want him to stay, but he ignores me completely and continues into the house, his pace quickening as he shakes my grip off him. He is now desperate to get out of here as quickly as he had arrived.

  When he reaches the front door he throws it open without hesitation, but then immediately flinches backward, bumping into me. On the other side of the threshold, Uncle Matt is standing with his hand in mid-air, ready to knock. He steps back in surprise, and he glances between Holden and me before cracking a smile and saying, “Hey, Kenzie! Is your dad around?”

  I steal a sideways glance up at Holden. He is even paler than he was outside, his eyes locked on my uncle. Matt is standing before us in full uniform, his Windsor Police badge on full display, his free hand resting on his duty belt right above his set of cuffs. The sight of a cop is seemingly enough to make Holden’s blood run cold, and his movements are jittery. “Kenzie, I’ll . . . I’ll see you around,” he mumbles, and then, without waiting a second longer, he rushes past Uncle Matt and down the driveway.

  “Is everything alright?” Matt asks. He cranes his neck to look over his shoulder at Holden, who is striding across the lawn and throwing open the door of his dad’s truck. He slams it shut behind him. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing,” I answer without missing a beat. I’m surprised I can even speak at this point, though I can barely look at Matt as the sound of Holden’s dad’s engine roars to life. The tires screech against the ground as he speeds off, and with my head as all over the place as it is, I can’t stick around here. I need to be alone to process everything, so I quickly spin around and take a few steps back down the hall. “Dad’s out on a job,” I tell Matt, snatching Mom’s car keys from the hall table next to Grace’s frame, “but can you please keep Mom company until I get back?”

  Matt scours me intensely with a solemn expression. I hate it when he goes all professional on me, and in a more formal tone, he asks, “MacKenzie, where are you off to?”

  With Mom’s keys gripped firmly in my hand, I swiftly step into a pair of flats that are lying by the door and make a dash outside onto the porch, headed for the car. Over my shoulder, I tell him, “Anywhere!”

  29

  I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do, what to think. I just drive.

  There is a weight bearing down on me that is forcing me to question everything. I am torn between my best friend and the boy I am falling in love with. I am torn between protecting Holden and telling Jaden the truth. He and Dani deserve to know what truly happened that night back in August. They need to know why their parents were killed.

  But Holden . . .

  I don’t know what sort of trouble he could get into. I don’t know what would happen if the truth was revealed. I imagine there would be a new investigation into the accident, but then what? I keep telling myself that Holden was at fault. Holden is the one who fell asleep at the wheel. But it was an accident. An accident that happened partly because he’d been working so hard to secure a future for himself. And now I’m the person who has to decide whether or not to take that future away from him. When I looked into his eyes, it almost seemed like the guilt that’s been eating him this last year is punishment enough. And will it even help the Hunters to have someone to blame?

  There is no one I can talk to about this, no one to ask for advice who isn’t already connected to the Hunters, no one to turn to. I don’t want to chase after Holden, mostly because I can’t look at him right now, and I can’t call Will. Mom already has too much going on in her head to bombard her with this, and usually I feel pretty comfortable confiding in Uncle Matt, but I obviously can’t tell him about Holden and the Hunter crash—he’s a cop! I don’t want to keep this secret to myself; how am I supposed to figure out how to deal with it? I only have two options: Keep the secret a secret, or tell it. Both of them are going to hurt someone.

  Stifling a groan, I hunch over the steering wheel, gripping it tightly with both hands and blinking fast to hold back the tears. I wish Holden hadn’t told me the truth. I wish I didn’t now know what I do, because I don’t know how I’m supposed to face him tomorrow after this. And how am I going to face up to Jaden? To Dani? How do I face them when I know something as important as this?

  I don’t know where I’m going, but I don’t want to be in Windsor, so I drive and drive and drive without planning any particular route. I head along Main Street and westbound out of the town, driving just below th
e speed limit while I focus on controlling my breathing. There are a lot of other cars out on the roads right now, but I try to imagine that they’re not here. That the road is empty apart from myself. I try to imagine myself as Holden, driving out of town to clear his head the same way I am now, and try to understand how quickly everything in your life can change.

  Wiping away my tears, I take the exit and merge onto the interstate. It’s busier here. More cars around, more lights. I keep on driving, following the interstate north toward Fort Collins. I don’t know where I’m going or if I’ll stop. I just drive, watching the glow of the streetlights.

  Standing in the hallway, knocking gently on the dorm room door, I find myself shivering. It’s growing colder outside and these dorms aren’t exactly the warmest in the hallways. I’m not wearing a jacket, because I left the house so fast that I didn’t have time to grab one. I didn’t have time to even brush my hair either, but right now, I don’t care that I’m in an awful state. I don’t care that there are streaks of mascara running down my cheeks. I don’t care that I’ve had to throw my hair up into a tangled bun atop my head. I stand with my arms wrapped around me, hugging my body tight while I wait patiently for the door to open. I hope he is here.

  It feels as though an hour has passed by the time I hear the door unlock, and then, slowly, it cracks open a few inches. Darren peers through the tiny gap at me. “Kenz?” he says. I’m pretty sure I’m the last person he would expect to see tonight, but nonetheless, he swings the door open wider. It’s not all that late, but he looks half asleep as he stands there in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”