If I Die Tonight

by Alison Gaylin

  She wasn’t sure how much time passed before the ambulance pulled up. It could have been seconds or hours, it didn’t matter, the way time was running, each fragment of each second suspended and hovering, Jackie’s heartbeat ticking like a clock. “You think it will rain?” she said to Connor as two paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher and hooked him up to an IV. “I think it will rain so hard that the roof will leak, and we’ll put out buckets and make hot cocoa and listen to the patter.”

  “That sounds nice, Mom.”

  Jackie was allowed to ride in the ambulance. Bill followed behind. As they sped to the hospital, the younger of the paramedics turned to her—a guy with sparkly eyes, a fish tattoo on his neck. “He’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot worse than this.”

  Jackie wasn’t sure whether or not he was lying. She thought he might be.

  AMY DIDN’T SHARE a bed with Vic. She couldn’t, as he slept fitfully on rubber sheets and often had accidents. But she did sleep next to him, in a cot with wheels that she pulled right up against the hospital bed, so close their faces were nearly touching. It usually helped her get to sleep, listening to the sound of his breathing, his heavy snores. But not tonight. She was meeting that New York Times reporter for lunch tomorrow, and she was nervous. She kept running different outfits through her mind, pairing vintage dresses with lipstick and shoes . . . Should she go conservative or sexy or a little of both? She wasn’t sure. Maybe pants were a better way to go, though Amy hardly ever wore pants. Palazzos, maybe. She had a lovely pair of orange palazzos.

  Amy’s brain was a mess. She’d taken two of Vic’s Ambien at least an hour ago, but they weren’t doing any good. Her mind kept sparking up and wandering and she didn’t like where it went. The Grants’ Tudor home. She’d gotten to know so much of it: their four-poster bed and their kitchen table, the mirrored wall in the dining room and the staircase, right in the middle of that long staircase, with Amy’s own songs blasting over the stereo, unstifled moans and clothes flying and lamps tipping over, no one the least concerned about making noise because they were the only ones in the house. Ryan hadn’t been home.

  Amy shut her eyes tight. Tears seeped out of the corners. It was a coincidence. It had to be. Ryan was probably sleeping over at a friend’s that night, maybe partying with some girls. Ryan was popular, while Wade Reed was a loner, an angry young man. She’d read online somewhere that he worshipped the devil. And besides, they’d found Amy’s ring in his locker. Sergeant Black had told her. Her yellow citrine ring.

  It was Wade who ran Liam down. Not Ryan. Ryan was Liam’s best friend. It didn’t even make sense.

  Amy began to relax, the Ambien finally getting to her, spreading over her body like a heated blanket. Vic started snoring and the rich hum filled the bedroom, the life in it lulling her to sleep.

  She’d never have to think of the Grants again. She’d never have to mention them to the police or to anyone. Wade had killed Liam Miller, not their son. The Tudor mansion could be forgotten, as though it had never happened at all. And Vic, my sweet Vic, will never find out . . .

  Drifting off to sleep, Amy thought of orange palazzos. Orange palazzos and pale pink ballet flats, a low-cut silk blouse. Oh, and the red patent-leather clutch she’d bought from Etsy a few weeks ago, the one that matched her lipstick and made her look like a dream.

  PEARL WAS STANDING in the middle of a field with her gun drawn, a hooded figure in front of her. “Stop,” she said to the figure. “Freeze.” The figure was Death, and if she shot it, everyone who ever died would come back to life. Including her mother. “Hold still,” Pearl said.

  But Death wouldn’t cooperate. Its hooded cloak billowed up into a wave, then shrank down into a black hoodie. Pearl pulled back her safety and pulled the trigger and shot Death in the head, blood spewing out, a crimson arc. But when it turned around, Pearl saw that it wasn’t Death at all. It was her mother, bleeding everywhere. Pearl was wearing the black cloak. Pearl was Death.

  Mason Marx marched out onto the field, carrying two cymbals. “Wake up,” he said. He crashed the cymbals together and Pearl woke up out of the dream to a different ringing sound. A text message. Pearl sat up in bed, switched the light on. According to the clock on her wall, it was 2:00 AM.

  She took a breath as the last of the dream left her. Mason Marx. That doomed kid. No matter what happened to Connor Reed, Mason Marx would never be free of this night. He would feel it in nightmares always, the explosion of the gun in his hands, a boy his own age dropping to the grass, all that blood, because of him. It wasn’t something you could ever recover from, no matter how much therapy you went to. Pearl knew that, and she had been a lot younger than Mason, her memory of it cloudier . . .

  Pearl checked her texts. Now that she was more awake, she realized the text had probably been from Paul. He had been working tonight, just like she was. He had been the one to take Connor to the hospital. She’d FaceTimed with him, after Connor had gone into the ER. He’d been so scared for this kid, and though it usually wasn’t like Pearl to comfort a man, it wasn’t like most men to seek comfort from her either. And so she’d comforted Paul, as best she could. “You’re the only one I can talk to,” he had said. “You’re the only one who understands.” Paul, whose last name Pearl still didn’t know.

  She opened her texts, and sure enough there was one from Paul, unread, though he’d sent it not at two but at one. She held her breath. Closed her eyes and hoped in a way that felt almost like praying, and Pearl never prayed. Please, she thought. Please, please, please.

  Then she read the text: The kid’s gonna be okay!!!! ☺ ☺ ☺

  Pearl’s heart swelled. She felt herself smiling so hard her face hurt, tears seeping out of the corners of her eyes. An emotion she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt before. Overjoyed. That’s what she felt. She ran her fingertip over the exclamation points, those stupid, corny smiley faces. She texted Paul: If you’re still awake, come over. Key under the mat. Leave your shoes outside the door.

  After she sent it, she checked the 2:00 AM text. It was from a number she wasn’t familiar with, and it said, simply: SL = Side Life.

  There was an attachment. A video. And as Pearl watched it, the sappy happiness drained out of her, the overjoy replaced by a different feeling: stronger, grimmer, and more familiar. It was the feeling of that last puzzle piece sliding into place.

  SHE WATCHED THE video one more time before calling the number it had come from, her mind running through the videos she’d seen, on Liam Miller’s phone and from this number, ticking off the crimes: Defacing a grave, breaking into private property, a purse theft, a carjacking. The CVS robbery.

  A male voice answered.

  “Ryan,” Pearl said.

  “Yes.”

  “I watched the video. I saw you and Liam in CVS.”

  He said nothing. She could hear his shaky breathing.

  She kept going. “You were daring each other to do bad things. It was getting worse and worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there others on your phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “Nothing violent.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Drug stuff. Graffiti. We slashed the tires on a UPS truck . . . We held up a gas station in Fishkill, but we just pretended we had a gun.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We were bored. Our whole lives, everything was so easy.” He took a breath, and Pearl thought of the CVS video: All that smashed glass. The two of them all in black, holding handfuls of pills, laughing like crows. “We weren’t hurting anybody,” Ryan said. “We just wanted to see what it was like.”

  “To see what what was like?”

  “Being in danger.”

  Pearl exhaled. “It was you in the black hoodie. You and Liam planned it. It wasn’t Wade. It was you.”

  His breathing grew heavier. She heard him sob. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” he said. “He wanted in the car and I hit the
accelerator instead of the brake . . . He was my best friend.”

  “Bobby knew about this?”

  “Yes. I mean . . . I told him the next day.”

  “He covered it up?”

  “Yes. He made me put that stuff in Wade’s locker—the pills and the ring. He made me bully Wade’s friend Rafe Burgess into giving me the combination. His Instagram password too. Bobby sent those awful texts to Tamara from it. I didn’t do that. I never would say those things to a girl, I swear.”

  Pearl took a deep breath. She thought of Udel, back in the car with her, bragging about how he could read people. Sucking down lo mein when he’d just watched an innocent kid get processed, cavity searched, humiliated. She thought about Bobby just a few hours ago, saying he was going to “sleep real well” tonight, after they’d brought Mason in, after Connor had been rushed to the hospital. Couldn’t wait to “get some shut-eye,” he’d said, with all these lives ruined and all that knowledge in his head.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Ryan was saying. “I was scared. I didn’t want to tell my parents. I pushed her car into the Kill and stayed out all night. The next morning I went to Bobby’s. He told me he would help. He said every story needs a hero and a villain. And if we played it his way, Liam could be a hero.”

  Pearl gripped the phone. Pathetic, lazy-assed Bobby Udel, who thought of this town as a book he’d read before. Making up lies. Destroying lives, just to get the ending he wanted. “Ryan.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know who the real villain is here.”

  Ryan took a deep breath. She could almost feel him trembling. “I do,” he said, finally. “I do.”

  Thirty-Two

  A deleted text exchange between Ryan Grant and Liam Miller from the cell phone of Ryan Grant, October 20, 1:00 AM.

  * * *

  You awake?

  * * *

  * * *

  S’up?

  * * *

  * * *

  They kicked me out again.

  * * *

  * * *

  Srsly?

  * * *

  * * *

  They have “company.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Ugh who?

  * * *

  * * *

  Don’t tell anybody, okay?

  * * *

  * * *

  I never tell anybody. It’s so gross, man.

  Your parents. WTF is wrong with them?

  * * *

  * * *

  Right? Anyway, this one is a singer. They met her at a club. She’s got a sweet ride. A Jag. Looking at it right now.

  * * *

  * * *

  You’re outside your house?

  * * *

  * * *

  I’m in my car. Sneak out. I’ll pick you up. I’ve got a plan for SL. Jack the car. Steal her stuff. It’ll be easy.

  * * *

  * * *

  No way!

  * * *

  * * *

  I was asleep. They kicked me out of the house. She deserves it.

  * * *

  * * *

  I don’t know dude. My parents think I’m asleep.

  * * *

  * * *

  Come on. Be a friend. Help me get her. They’ll never find out. I promise.

  * * *

  * * *

  OK.

  * * *

  * * *

  Any pills left?

  * * *

  * * *

  Lots.

  * * *

  * * *

  Good. Bring em.

  * * *

  Thirty-Three

  Good thing you got my broad shoulders,” Dad said.

  It still felt weird, thinking of him as Dad, but after tonight it felt even weirder not to think of him that way. He was here with Mom, after all. He’d come to the hospital. Wade wasn’t here. Not that Connor wanted him here. “Where’s Wade?”

  “He’s home, honey,” said Mom. “I texted him you’ll be fine. He’s very relieved.”

  Connor rolled his eyes. It hurt. He had a headache, and he felt groggy and weak. He’d just come out of surgery. They’d removed the bullet from his shoulder, transfused him full of blood. “Good as new,” the doctor had said. “You’ll be in a sling for a few weeks though. With a cool cast for all your friends to sign.”

  All my friends, Connor thought now, picturing a plain white cast, with Noah’s lone signature, again Wade’s fault. If it weren’t for Wade, Connor would have lots of friends, not to mention an intact shoulder and a nonbroken front window and a mom that didn’t look the way his mom did right now—gray-skinned and hollow-cheeked, a person eaten alive by worry.

  “I’m so happy, honey,” Mom said. Connor felt like crying.

  “I’m really tired, guys,” he said, his voice cracking. “I think it’s the drugs.”

  Dad nodded. “I should probably be getting home anyway. It’s after two in the morning.” He ruffled Connor’s hair. “See you soon, buddy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I promise. I’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Weird,” Connor said. “But good.”

  “Right?” Mom kissed him on the cheek. She squeezed his hand. “Thank you,” she whispered, but not to him, or Dad, or anybody in the room. “Get some rest, sweetheart.”

  After Mom and Dad left, Connor stared at the ceiling, remembering back to when he was a little kid, finding that romance novel manuscript Mom had written, deep in her desk drawer. Wade had read some scenes aloud to Connor—stuff about the British countryside in the 1800s, a lonely lady landowner and the ghost of a duke. Connor couldn’t remember the details, but he could remember how he had felt, hearing all those big words, that detailed story, as though there was this whole other part of Mom that they’d never seen before, this secret skill of hers, like a superpower. It had made him proud. But now it felt as if that part of her was gone, along with every other part of her that didn’t have to do with worrying about Wade.

  Connor closed his eyes and tried to sleep, sounds filling his mind: The smashing window. Gunshot cracks. Wade’s tires screeching away from the curb, leaving his family behind.

  WADE HADN’T ANSWERED any of Jackie’s texts. She’d lied to Connor because she didn’t want him to worry, but now she was hoping against hope that he’d gone home and to bed. After she’d sent her latest text, saying Connor had come out of surgery and that he was going to be all right, she’d used the GPS program she’d downloaded last year but had never used and tried to find Wade that way. But it hadn’t worked. He’d turned off his phone. One step ahead of her. She turned her Facebook notifications back on, even though Wade had taken his page down. Maybe someone would see him and contact her on Messenger. Some friend she didn’t know about. The only hope she had.

  “Look,” Bill was saying, “if you need me to stop by the house and see if he’s back, I can.”

  Jackie pictured Wade, waking up from a deep sleep to find his father standing over him. “No, no. I’ll go. Soon as I get Connor situated. You get back to your girls.”

  “Jackie.”

  “Yes?”

  A look crossed his face—regret mixed with something else, something Jackie had to turn away from. “Everything will be okay.”

  She knew that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say. All these years apart, Jackie could still read Bill’s mind, and she was grateful to him for keeping his thoughts to himself. “I know it will,” she said quietly. “Life only gives us as much as we can take.”

  BOBBY UDEL STILL lived with his parents. Pearl probably shouldn’t have visibly reacted to that information, but when Ryan Grant told her, she still rolled her eyes.

  “Tough guy,” Tally said, taking the words right out of her mouth.

  They were in the parking lot of Havenkill High School, where Ryan had been waiting, Pearl having woken up half the Havenkill Force, including Sergeant Black, for backup. Not one of them had complained, but Pearl wasn’t surpris
ed. They were all solid guys. Bobby Udel was the only one who might have raised a fuss about being woken up in the middle of the night to go to a high school parking lot and tape-record a kid’s confession. And he was at home with Mom and Dad, sleeping off his lies.

  “He says it saves him money,” Ryan said. “I actually feel bad for his mom and dad.” He was braced against his Jeep, shivering in the cold. His hands were cuffed behind his back—protocol, but he didn’t seem to mind. He’d come with a written-out confession and subjected himself to the sergeant’s interview, answering every question fully. There was freedom in admitting one’s guilt, in having no more left to hide. And Ryan seemed as relaxed and free as Pearl had ever seen him, his shoulders no longer slumped from the weight of all those secrets.

  “Do you have anything else you want to add?” Sergeant Black said, tape recorder still running.

  Ryan nodded. “Yes,” he said, his stubbled head sparkling in the parking lot light, his eyes glowing in shadows. “Liam was trying to stop me from taking the car. He changed his mind about stealing it. That was why he ran at me. He wanted to do the right thing.”