by Lara Avery
The engine revved and the little blue car streaked down the street, the other backseat passenger slamming the door as it sped away.
Bryce’s muscles relaxed. She let go of Sydney’s hand. Warmth was creeping back into her limbs.
“Now what?” Sydney turned to Bryce. “You want to go home? I don’t suppose you’ve acquired a car in the hour we were here.”
Bryce clutched for her purse, but it wasn’t there. She looked at Sydney, whose phone was tucked in her leggings.
Bryce called 411 on Sydney’s phone as her sister looked at her and smoked a cigarette, puzzling.
“City and state?”
“Nashville, Tennessee.”
I do my best studying in the middle of the night, he told her once when they were entwined in the grass. When nothing is awake but my brain.
“What listing?”
“Vanderbilt Medical Center.”
After speaking with the front desk and the confused night nurse at the neurology wing, Bryce got connected to Sam’s room. The line rang and rang. Her heart sank. He wasn’t there. But then, a click.
“Hello?” Carter whispered.
Bryce felt a smile growing wide on her face. “I had a feeling you were there.”
Sydney cleared her throat, making a “get on with it” motion with her hands.
“Can you pick us up?” She told him where they were, and that it was an emergency. She hung up and they waited.
But it wasn’t an emergency anymore. Sydney was there, next to her. That’s what she was telling herself, trying to slow her frantic heart as the heat crept up her spine again, dotting her vision in black. She tried to breathe normally.
“Bryce?”
She held on to Sydney’s arm, trying to keep her balance. She lost her sight, her feeling, no longer sure if she was vertical. In a blur, the pavement swerved toward her.
on’t ever do that to me again.”
Sydney, Carter, and Bryce sat at the Grahams’ kitchen table. They’d had a quiet car ride home.
“I thought you were about to go into another coma.” Sydney was drinking tea, her pale hands wrapped tightly around her mug. She kept sneaking glances at Bryce when she thought her sister wasn’t looking.
“I’m sorry,” Bryce said. She couldn’t say it enough. She shouldn’t have gone out, she shouldn’t have drank, she shouldn’t have gotten herself worked up enough to pass out on the sidewalk.
As soon as Bryce had hit pavement, she was awake. The first words out of her mouth were, “Don’t take me to the hospital.”
Maybe it was the way Bryce had clutched her, or that Carter had pulled up seconds later, but Sydney had listened. Now she finished her tea and went to bed without a word.
Carter looked at Bryce, his eyes searching. He scooted his chair close to Bryce’s, and laid his hands on its surface, waiting.
“I’m sorry to you, too,” Bryce said.
“For what?” Carter said simply, his palms turned up briefly.
Bryce put her hand in his.
For the first time in what seemed like forever, she saw his smile. His blue-gray eyes were bright. With his other hand he reached toward his pocket, where he kept his Vanderbilt Medical ID card clipped to the fabric.
He unclipped it and threw it across the room.
In the morning, Bryce’s floating mood was punctured by the sight of Sydney in her same spot at the kitchen table, head slumped in her arms. Her shoulders shook with sobs.
Under her folded arms was the local paper.
THREE KILLED IN DRUNK DRIVING ACCIDENT, the headline screamed. Underneath it, among the three school photos, was Sydney’s friend Jack. Bryce drew in a breath.
Her vision had been real. She was right to keep Sydney out of that car. She swallowed, relief mingled with sadness washing over her.
Bryce put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. Sydney grabbed it and squeezed. Bryce didn’t need much else. She had kept her alive, and that was enough.
She helped Sydney back to bed, and then Carter came over. Though it was sprinkling lightly, they sat outside, the mist coating their warm skin. Bryce wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shirt.
“So tell me,” he whispered.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me how you knew to keep Sydney out of that car.”
The wind swept through, and droplets of water landed in her eyes. She huddled further into him, not answering.
“Or you could tell me how you knew I sat with you while you were sleeping,” he said, his fingers under her chin, bringing her out of the folds of his arms. “Or why the CAT scan broke.”
Bryce sighed. Don’t tell Dr. Warren sounded too much like Don’t tell Mom. She sat up as he narrowed his eyes at her.
“My family doesn’t need any more trouble,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“Good.” They were clear.
Bryce started at the beginning, from the moment she woke up. The sharp filter on the world, the strange sights, the feeling that things weren’t quite right. She told him everything. Every little detail, from the heated pain to the visions moving her forward and backward in time, putting her in places she’d never been before. When she finished, she felt like seven layers of heavy skin were peeled off her body. She was bare, yes, but she was free.
“So tell me,” Bryce echoed, willing with every ounce of her that he wouldn’t pick her up right then and carry her back to the hospital for another CAT scan. “What does it mean?”
But Carter was lost in thought. “So that’s why your brain activity spiked so rapidly.”
He grasped the sides of Bryce’s head suddenly, looking back and forth between her eyes. His intensity made her laugh. But she was curious.
“Is there an answer?”
“No,” he said, letting go, brushing her hair from her face. “Neuroscience has always said the human brain is hardwired, permanent by the time we’re adults. But there are also studies that say the brain has the ability to change structure and function in response to experience. When the brain suffers trauma it has the ability to rezone itself.”
Carter paused, taking in her confused expression. “It’s like after your accident, your brain was a puzzle, adjusting the shape of its pieces and how they fit together, but creating the same overall picture.”
“Oh,” Bryce said.
He was getting excited. “Experiences could be registered more or less intensely, with different emotional and even sensory reactions. Memories could be stored differently, released differently. Understanding changes, perception changes. Your perception could have been replaced by what you imagined others to see.”
He stood up, pacing around the blue rectangle of the pool.
“Everyone’s brain is trained to think linearly in time, but yours could have been rewired to understand time in a webbed or networked fashion, moments becoming linked less by cause and effect, and more by objects, words, other emotional triggers.”
Bryce sat on the pool chair, her apparently miraculous head resting in her hands. Dried leaves skittered across the tarp. Carter had paced all the way to the other end, standing near the unused diving board.
“But what’s the point of all this if I’m going to die?” Bryce called.
His face looked pained, but his body remained stiff, upright. He slowly made his way back to her, sitting in a neighboring pool chair, his legs stretched in front of him.
“Maybe you won’t die,” he said lightly.
“You said my brain wouldn’t survive the swelling,” she said.
He looked away.
Bryce had had plenty of time to come to terms with this fact. She had hit out her doom with a hammer, cut it away with a saw, walked with it past the Grahams’ property until her legs were too weak to stand. Carter had not.
He looked back at her, squinting. “You remember things from when you were asleep?”
Bryce nodded.
“Tell me about one of the articles I read to you. T
he one about insects.”
“I can’t just pull things out of my head,” she said.
“Try. It was in one of those nature magazines for kids. It was all there was around to read that day because I read you everything else.”
Bryce closed her eyes. She thought about her hospital room, the blue curtain, the white ceiling, the circular lights. With a quick streak of pain, Carter was next to her, his face fuller than it was now, younger, wearing a T-shirt and shorts because the room was sweltering on a sticky summer day.
“Uhh…” he was saying, flipping through a faded magazine. “Let’s see.”
He settled on a page. “Want to learn about cicadas?” he asked Bryce.
She watched his face as he read, fascinated with this version of Carter just barely out of his teenage years, deciding to spend a summer day at the bedside of a girl he didn’t know, might never know.
“Cicadas are one of the longest-living insects. You may know them from the buzzing sound coming from certain trees as they emerge each summer. That sound is their legs rubbing together, communicating with each other after they have spent the winter underground.”
Each word coming out of Carter’s mouth was one Bryce knew better than the last. She began to speak along with him as he read.
“‘Some cicadas can live up to seventeen years underground, slowly growing from babies to adults. They read the temperature of the ground in cycles to know when the years have passed. When it’s time, they emerge from their holes to mate as beautiful, fully winged adults.…’”
Bryce was in the backyard again now, the heat of her head morphing with the fading heat of the September afternoon, quoting the article to Carter, tears pricking her eyes.
“‘Once their purpose is fulfilled, they die, leaving the earth as quickly as they came.’”
Carter looked tired, brushing her cheek with his hand. Then he wrapped his arms around her like he would never let go.
ryce was painting by numbers with her mother. Well, her mother wasn’t painting by numbers; she was painting freehand from a photo of a Swedish winter landscape she found in National Geographic. She swirled blue and white to make an icy gray, and used tinges of purple for the shadows. That’s why her mother was so good with color, Bryce knew. She remembered her trying to get Sydney and Bryce to paint pictures when they were kids. But Sydney was more interested in perfecting her version of “America, the Beautiful,” and all Bryce wanted to do was run around catching bugs.
Bryce had spotted an art supplies store in a little nook near the Vanderbilt campus, and asked Carter to stop the car for a second. She had no idea where to begin buying paints, so she chose the most colorful box. And then, thinking about how angry she got when she wasn’t good at things like art, Bryce threw in a couple of paint-by-numbers kits to boot.
Her mother had gotten home from an appointment to find tempera paints, paper, and Bryce at the dining room table, filling in a picture of a basket of kittens.
“Want to join me?” Bryce had asked.
Her mother had burst into nervous laughter. “I haven’t painted in…God knows…” But she picked up a paintbrush lovingly.
“At least you’re good at keeping inside the lines,” her mother joked later, leaning over from her Swedish mountains.
“Yeah, if you want a lesson from me in kittens, just ask,” Bryce said with a smirk.
Her mom chuckled.
Bryce glanced at the National Geographic photo again. Pure white snow coated a tall, imposing mountain range. The Alps. Gabby and Greg had seen them in person.
Gabby.
With a last flourish on one of the kitten tails, Bryce whipped out her phone. She would see her friend one more time, she hoped. Bryce dug her teeth into her lip and typed, Coffee?
It took a little while, but finally, the answer was yes.
Bryce was glad the café had a wall full of windows. It was a shame not to be outdoors on such a beautiful autumn day. Having only a thin pane between her and the orange leaves and cool breeze was the next best thing. Bryce had arrived early to get some iced tea and a scone, and to read. Thanks to Carter’s extended study hours, she was now halfway through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But she was having a hard time keeping her heart with Huck and the circus this morning.
People rushed in and out of the café, grabbing coffee and loading themselves into cars strapped with canoes and inner tubes. It was a beautiful Saturday, and everyone was scrambling to soak up the air they’d missed, holed up in their cubicles.
The door chimed. Bryce sat up in her chair. Gabby stepped inside. She had cut her hair, and her brown eyes looked brighter now, her cheekbones sharper, without a dark curtain or a winding braid. She looked around.
“Over here,” Bryce called from the window. She shoved away the little shivers of nervousness she felt when she saw her friend. There wasn’t enough time left to be scared or worried. Gabby would forgive her, or she wouldn’t, but either way, Bryce would tell her how she felt. She could at least do that.
When Gabby spotted Bryce, her lips turned up in a smile. She wore a cardigan over her long linen tank, and jeans paired with ballet flats. When she slipped into the seat across from Bryce, she looked happy. Her face was full. Her cheeks had color.
Gabby set her hands in front of her, folded. She looked at Bryce, waiting.
“You look great,” Bryce said, putting her own hands around her glass of iced tea, glancing at the crescent lemon that drifted around the edges. “I like your hair.”
“Thank you,” Gabby said.
Bryce took a breath. “I called you here because I wanted you to know that I’m so sorry. The sorriest I’ve ever been in my whole life,” Bryce added slowly. “I also wanted to say you were right about me being confused. I know it’s no excuse, but…I was so confused. I was mixed up about the past and the present.” Bryce stopped, staring into Gabby’s eyes, which seemed to be looking through her. She swallowed. “I should have just told you how I felt. About the whole thing. About how hard it was to see you two together. I know it was still so wrong. I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough.”
Gabby gave her a sad smile. “What’s done is done.”
Bryce began to respond, but Gabby held up a hand. Bryce stayed silent.
“I wasn’t marrying Greg to hurt you, but I did. I see that now. And I’m sorry about that, too.”
Bryce shook her head. “We both ended up getting hurt, I think.”
Gabby responded with a nod, her hands still folded. Neither of them said a word for a long time. Cars came and went. The door opened and shut. Bryce wondered if that was all. She wondered if Gabby would leave now. This could be the last time she ever saw Gabby. The girl whose laughter filled up even the largest room. The thought of ending things like this made Bryce squirm with pain.
“Can we…” Bryce finally spoke up. “Start over?”
Gabby’s head tilted. She thought for a moment, her eyes bright. Her hands flattened on the table. “I think so,” she said with a smile.
Bryce raised her eyebrows, breaking into disbelieving laughter. “Really?”
Gabby shrugged. “You know I can’t hold grudges.” She broke off a piece of Bryce’s scone and popped it into her mouth. “Besides, something tells me it wouldn’t have worked out anyway with Greg,” she said with a bitter smile. “Guess where our dear friend is now?”
“I don’t know,” Bryce said, leaning forward. He hadn’t contacted her.
“Me neither,” Gabby said, nodding at the look of surprise on Bryce’s face. “Right?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“He took his grandmother’s old van and all his camping stuff. He won’t answer anyone’s calls.”
Bryce rolled her eyes. He had dreamed of new inventions and trips to space and questions like whether colors could match up with sounds. Maybe he was better off sailing from one new landscape to another.
Gabby laughed and Bryce joined in. As her shoulders heaved, she fought to conceal the pain
shooting through her chest. These days, Bryce got a little dose of pain every time she did anything besides sitting. She shrugged it off. Her heart was soaring.
“He wasn’t ready for either of us,” Gabby said thoughtfully, their laughter fading.
Bryce lifted her iced tea in agreement, then told Gabby about Carter and the “senior prom,” and her night out with Sydney, minus the vision and the blood.
Gabby said they could go out whenever she came back to visit, but she was leaving tomorrow for D.C.
“You’re going, then?” Bryce had allowed herself to hope that now that Gabby was back, she’d be there with her until the very end.
“I sure am,” Gabby answered. “I won’t be able to start until second semester, but this way I can get my bearings before I start school.”
“You’re going to live there all by yourself?”
Gabby looked at Bryce as if she should know the answer. “You told me I could do it! Don’t go back on me now.”
“Of course not,” Bryce pushed out. “I just wondered if things might have changed.…”
“Well.” Gabby paused, smiling to herself. “I don’t want to bring up the past again, but…sometimes when something bad happens in a place, you want to get away from it as soon as it happens. You know?”
“Yeah,” Bryce said, swallowing tears. No tears. Not today.
She hadn’t gotten to know the grown-up Gabby for long, but Bryce knew she’d do well up there. She had a way of winning people over, of making them feel good about themselves without even trying. She was smart enough that she’d move up in her class. She’d ace her exams, and then she’d meet someone at a function, and they’d give her a job on the spot because of the way she carried herself, like she already knew she’d been chosen for it.
She was the girl who could rock a tiara at a club and consume a three-hundred-page novel in a day. She was the girl who could lift herself out of the muck and forgive a betrayal from her closest friend, just like that.
Bryce wrapped her arms around Gabby and held her tight until she moved to go.
She held Bryce’s hands for a squeeze, and turned to the door. “See you soon, Bry! I’ll call you from D.C.”
