Angel Falls (Angel Falls Series, #1)

by Babette de Jongh

  “I realize my rent is a bit on the low side. But this place was a dump when I moved in. It only looks nice because I made it look nice. I cleaned, I sanded, I painted. All summer long.” The brick on the south-facing wall took six whole gallons of paint. All those tiny crevices. I thought I’d never finish.

  He shrugged. My elbow grease didn’t enter into his bottom line. His bedroom eyes burned a path from my ratty ballet slippers, laddered tights, and too-thin leotard to my face. “I’m sure you worked hard, lass. But your rent hardly covers the cost of utilities.”

  “I’m sorry if the cost of my utilities causes a problem. Not too much of one, I hope, because I just signed my lease for a whole year.”

  My polite way of saying F.U.

  He squatted next to me, close enough to touch. Jeans molded to muscular thighs. Rolled-back shirtsleeves strained against wide shoulders and powerful arms. I imagined the kind of strength all those muscles indicated.

  I imagined all sorts of things I shouldn’t be imagining.

  I wanted so much to like him, but I wasn’t sure I could. My body wanted his body, sure. Falling in lust with him would be easy. But I’d need to like him, to have the friend part of friends-with-benefits.

  A tiny smirk lifted one corner of his mouth, as if he’d read my mind. He stood. “I’ll let you get back to what you were doing.”

  I struggled with the impulse to leap up and walk him to the door. But my nipples were still trying to pop out of my leotard, and I didn’t want him to think they were excited to see him. So I stayed put.

  “It was nice meeting you,” I said, hoping it kept me from seeming completely rude. Polite F.U.’s were acceptable. Bad manners were not.

  He gave me a my-work-is-done-here nod. “Feel free to call if you need anything.”

  His body, in my bed, came to mind. “I will, thanks.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I snagged one of the overfilled shopping bags Melody was about to drop, and tried to remember where we’d parked. I hoped it wasn’t far. “Jeez-o-Pete, Melody, I guess you invited me to go shopping so I could help carry your hundred pounds of loot.” Five dresses from three different boutiques, two nearly-identical pairs of strappy sandals in a Buy-One-Get-One deal, jeans and blouses and chunky jewelry from one store after another after another.

  “It isn’t my fault you didn’t buy anything.” Melody pursed her lips in the trademark pout she’d perfected when we were teenagers. “I know you’re mad about the mix-up with Valerie, and I’m sorry. I could have sworn I made that salon appointment.”

  Scanning the parking lot in the evening gloom, I spied Melody’s midnight blue SUV parked under a security light that was just beginning to flicker on. I started walking in that direction. “I’m not mad.” I’d just forgotten that I hate shopping, and that outings with Melody were always all about Melody. “I’m sure God wants me to have mousy hair.”

  “I’ll make an appointment for you next weekend.”

  “Can we forget about it? I’m happy with my hair the way it is.” Not quite blond, not quite brown was fine with me.

  It was almost dark when we loaded the shopping bags and secured them behind the cargo net. By the time we reached the twisting highway that had been built-up along the river, the only scrap of light in the universe came from the car’s headlights. The feeble glow swept brush strokes of gray-green onto the forest of pine trees.

  Melody turned the lights to high beam. “Have you met Ian Buchanan yet? I heard he bought The Angel Falls Informer from old man Shaw.”

  “God, yes.” I pounced on the subject, telling-all about his irate phone call. “I haven’t decided whether he’s an asshole or not.”

  “He seemed nice to me,” Melody said in her sweet little Smurf voice. I was one of the few people who knew some of that sweetness wasn’t real sugar. “And besides...” She sighed like a teenage groupie. “He’s so handsome.” As if she didn’t have her own handsome husband waiting at home, keeping their kids so she could spend the day shopping.

  “No, wait. I’ve decided. He’s an asshole whose good looks only make him more dangerous.”

  Melody glanced my way. “It sounds like you’re enjoying the challenge. It wouldn’t be fun if it was too easy to wrap your sexy new landlord around your pinky finger.”

  Says Mel, an expert at wrapping. Such an expert, she wrapped my boyfriend tight enough to turn him into her husband. I picked at a hangnail on the pinky finger that had never held onto a man for long, much less wrapped one. “Wow, Mel, you didn’t tell me you’d gotten a degree in psychology. Congratulations.”

  “My Mrs. Degree qualifies me to psychologize, didn’t you know?” Mel laughed a birds-singing-in-the-trees laugh that climbed up my nerve endings.

  But her high-pitched laugh wasn’t the problem. My rotten attitude was the problem. She might have stolen her Mrs. Degree from me, but the statute of limitations on that crime had long since expired. After keeping the title for twelve years, she’d earned the right to claim it. The dank smell of sour grapes in the air was coming from me. I had no right to sit in judgment on the quality of Mel’s sweetness.

  “Why don’t you put in a CD?” Melody opened the center console and handed me a CD, since I’d failed to punt the conversational ball down the field.

  I glanced at the title and put it back. “Don’t you have anything approaching real music?” I rifled through the country twang collection. “Nope,” I answered my own question. “You’ve gone over to the dark side.”

  The headlights flashed on mile marker twenty three. We were half an hour from home. Much too long to listen to country music. I turned on the radio and dialed through bands of static. “Reception out here is pathetic.” I plugged my phone into the car’s USB port and scrolled through my Spotify playlist.

  Melody made a strange choking sound. “My God!”

  I looked up. Headlights pinned us through the windshield, first from one side of the road, then the other. A huge truck loomed in front of us. My lungs quit working. I dropped my phone and grabbed the dashboard. Those two yellow headlights expanded until they were all I could see. My heart raced and my insides buzzed with fear. We were going to die.

  Melody screamed, slammed on brakes, and jerked the wheel.

  The car skidded off the blacktop. The tires plowed through soft dirt then dug in, lifting the driver’s side off the ground. The car balanced on two wheels, and I had all the time in the world to contemplate our fate. We would roll down the embankment. Sink into the swamp with the water moccasins and alligators and flesh-eating-bacteria.

  The car dropped to the blacktop with a whoomp, right in the path of the oncoming truck. Its bulldog hood ornament was close enough to—

  The airbag exploded, burning my arms, punching me in the face. My bones smacked together. Glass spewed, pelting my skin. Smoke stung my eyes and clogged my throat. My head spun. No... we were spinning. Backward, screaming down the highway, a tin-can billiard ball hit with too much English. CDs and cell phones ricocheted like bullets; an umbrella whacked me in the forehead and whirled through the broken windshield.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  We hurtled down the embankment and rolled toward the black water below. The roof smashed into something and crumpled. Metal groaned then settled. The car rested on the driver’s side.

  Movement stopped, time slowed.

  I hung sideways, my chest and ribs smashed by the seatbelt, my heart going haywire. Arms and legs dangling, hair in my face, I coughed up the taste of smoke and blood and dirt and glass.

  One by one, my senses came back online, but a foggy sense of unreality stood between me and my brain. The dashboard wavered like it was under water. Mel’s face was a pale blur below me.

  “Melody?” My voice sounded hoarse. “Melody, are you all right?”

  No answer. But I heard her breathing. Harsh rasping inhales, soft huffing exhales.

  She was hurt. I had to help her. “Hang on, I’m coming.” I pressed my feet against the
dash to keep from falling on top of her, and tried to unbuckle my seatbelt. But something stabbed my arm. I looked down, expecting to see a chunk of metal sticking out of my left bicep.

  My arm looked fine, but when I moved it, pain blazed through me like fire. I felt lightheaded, and realized I was breathing too fast, a breath away from hyperventilating. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Muttering curse words didn’t help. Fucking fabulous. “Melody, I think my arm might be broken. I can’t get my seatbelt undone. Are you okay?”

  Her gasping breaths had slowed. “It hurts to breathe.”

  “You probably cracked a few ribs. But we’re still alive. We’ll be okay.”

  “I can’t... I can’t breathe.” She was panting, short, shallow breaths. “Help me.”

  Hanging sideways by the seatbelt, I felt myself spinning through a memory, springing hand to hand to foot to foot, cartwheeling through fifth grade with Mel’s hands at my waist. She taught me to cartwheel, and I rewrote her incoherent essay on Beowulf in high school. She dyed my hair orange—not on purpose—and I showed her how to wax her legs. Then she somehow managed to get her legs stuck together and ended up in the ER.

  We had always helped each other, or tried to, at least. And I had allowed the one time she hurt me to cancel out all that helping. In a flash of gratitude-induced insight, I let go of my long-held resentment and promised God that from here on out, I’d be a for-real best friend to Melody. She couldn’t change our past, but I could change our future. “Are you hurt anywhere else? Can you climb up to the road?”

  She didn’t answer. Her struggle for breath was all the answer I needed. I had to do something, but my brain was having a hard time coming up with a plan. My heart pounded in my head and behind my eyes. My chest hurt from hanging by the seatbelt. My throat felt dry from breathing in the smoke. My sinuses stung from the smell of gasoline—

  Holy shit! What if the car caught fire?

  I had to get us out of here.

  I pushed my legs against the misshapen dash, curved my spine into the bucket seat, and locked my knees to get my weight off the seatbelt buckle. I tried again to unfasten my seatbelt. It popped loose, flew up, and whacked me in the forehead. I fell, hit the steering wheel, and landed in a heap on the driver’s door, practically in Melody’s lap. I touched her face. Her skin felt cold, clammy. She coughed, a wet, rumbling sound. Dark foam trickled from her mouth.

  Her breathing sounded... bubbly.

  Sparks of panic exploded like firecrackers under my skin. “I have to call 911.” My cell phone still dangled from the USB cord. “Thank you, God.” I punched in the numbers.

  “911 Dispatch,” a woman’s voice answered.

  “Help.” My voice shook. I took a breath. “We need help.”

  “What is your emergency?”

  “Accident. C-C- Car...” I couldn’t get enough air to speak. “Car accident.”

  “Calm down, ma’am. What is your location?”

  “Highway 80.” I saw again the headlights’ flash on the glowing mile-marker. “We just passed marker twenty three on the way to Angel Falls.”

  “Is your car on the road, or—?”

  “No. We’ve gone down the embankment—on the river side.”

  Mel’s breath in my face smelled like blood, like someone had just opened a package of raw, bloody meat. I realized then that her ribs weren’t just cracked, but broken. Maybe broken enough to puncture her lungs.

  “My friend is really hurt. You’ve got to send someone.”

  “I’m dispatching police and ambulance services right now.”

  “Tell them to hurry.”

  “They’re on the way. Stay on the line until they get there.”

  The cell phone made a low-battery-hiccup, then died in my hand.

  Melody coughed, spewing blood, making a choking, retching sound. Jesus, help us. She was drowning in her own blood. With my right hand, I pulled up the hem of her shirt and used it to clean her face. A thousand white-hot lightning bolts shot up my left arm with every movement, even though I held it close to my side.

  “Casey.” She turned her head toward me. The moon had risen, and we could see each other clearly. “Am I dying?”

  My teeth chattered. My hands shook. My skin erupted with goose bumps. “Of course not, Mel. You’re just scared.”

  She made a sobbing sound, then choked. “I don’t want to die.”

  “You’re not going to die. I won’t let you.” My voice sounded far away, muffled by the blood rushing in my ears, the pulse pounding in my head. “Help is coming. Just hang on.”

  She sucked in air that seemed too thick for her to take in. “If I—” Her exhale made an awful, horrible gurgling sound. “If I die...” Her hand clutched mine. “Take care...” Her fingernails stabbed me like tiny knives. “...of my kids.”

  Jesus, Christ. She couldn’t die! Not like this. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  “I’m sorry...”

  “Don’t apologize. You’re not going to die.”

  “I stole Ben...”

  My body flooded with heat, as if I’d just been caught in a lie. Had she known all along that I still loved Ben? That I still wanted him? But not like this. Never like this. She could keep him forever and I’d be happy for it, if she’d just keep on breathing. I wiped her face again.

  “Take,” She choked, then managed a rattling inhale. “Take him back.” Her voice was a whisper, almost more thought than sound.

  “Jeez, Mel. Would you please stop yacking and breathe?” She couldn’t get any air, and there was nothing I could do to help her.

  Her lips moved. “Promise.”

  “Okay, I promise.” I’d promise anything to make her shut up and breathe. “But you’ve got to...”

  Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her body went limp.

  “Dammit!” I tilted her head back, put my mouth over hers, and tried to force air into her lungs. Her cheeks puffed out. Her lungs didn’t expand. “Don’t you die!” I tried chest compressions, but with only one hand, it wasn’t enough. I tried breathing for her. None of it worked. “Dammit, Mel, please don’t die.”

  After what seemed like forever, I stopped trying. Shivering in the night air, I held her limp body close, as if by holding tight I could keep her from leaving this world. “Please, God,” I whispered. “Don’t let her die.”

  But she was already gone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Time stopped.

  It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. It felt like a lifetime that I clung to Melody’s lifeless body and shivered so hard my teeth chattered. My ribs ached and my injured arm radiated a throbbing pain all the way up through the top of my head, all the way down to my knees. After an eternity, I heard voices yelling. “They’re down here! Down here! Hurry!” Lights arced through the night, enormous light-sabers flashing across the dark sky.

  At first, I fought against the arms that pulled me away from her and lifted me out of the wreckage. I was vaguely aware of soft words and gentle hands, of being lifted from the car and strapped down to a flat surface. “Wait, no! Wait!” I flailed around, grabbed the metal sides of the basketlike contraption and struggled to sit up. “You’ve got to help my friend.” I knew Melody was dead, but some part of me hoped something more could be done to save her.

  “Ma’am, you’ve got to be still.” Hands pushed me back down, straps pulled tight.

  I struggled. I couldn’t let myself be taken away from her. Couldn’t leave her all alone in that crumpled mass of metal. “No! Wait. Please.”

  “Hold up a minute.”

  I recognized the Scottish accent before I saw him. Then my hand was in his, and I finally let myself relax. “Ian, don’t let them leave her here.”

  Ian glanced at one of the medics, eyebrows raised in question. Then his lips tightened. He squeezed my hand. “Wilson is here. He helped me find you. He’ll stay with your friend, and I’ll go with you. Deal?”

  Everything that happened after that was cou
ched in a hazy blur of light and sound that never quite reached me. Carried up the hill, lifted into the ambulance, I felt wrapped in a protective layer of cotton batting, so nothing could really touch me.

  Except him.

  Even when the paramedics tried to push him away, he held onto my hand, stubbornly staying with me no matter what anyone said he was allowed to do. He never let go, as if he knew I would go spinning off into the void that loomed just beyond him. In the ambulance, his wide shoulders shielded me from the flashing lights and featureless faces. In the emergency room, his presence protected me from the bustling people and beeping alarms. His touch was the only thing I felt, until someone stretched my right arm out, holding it down firmly.

  Cold fluid rushed into my veins, numbness chased the pain away, and I surrendered to it.

  It seemed like days later that I opened my eyes in a hospital room, but in reality it was just the morning after the accident. Memories of the accident and its aftermath, the emergency room ordeal of X-rays and examinations, all seemed hazy and dreamlike. I wished for someone to tell me it had all been a terrible dream, but there was only my mother, sitting in a chair by the bed. Her sad eyes and the tight resignation of her mouth told me it wasn’t a dream.

  I would not be able to breathe a sigh of relief and get back to living my life as it had been.

  I would have to begin to live with this horrible thing I couldn’t even bear to think of. “She’s dead.” I said the words out loud, two sharp jabs straight into my heart.

  My mother dipped her chin just once in an almost-nod, an I-can’t-bear-to-say-this nod, and blinked back tears. “Yes.”

  The bright, avaricious voice of a talk show host blaring from the television set on the wall seemed obscene. How could anyone, anywhere in the world, remain unaffected? Everything I’d ever worried about, obsessed over, loved or hated, seemed miniscule compared to this.

  My ruined career, bah.