“Maddy,” I whispered, hoping she’d hear me. Hoping she’d acknowledge me, say something, anything.
“There you go. Good. Now, do you know where you are?”
I tried to shake my head, but it hurt to move. “No,” I managed to whisper.
“That’s okay,” he said. “We’re going to move you now. You’re going to be fine.”
“Maddy,” I repeated as his hands reached out for me. I didn’t fight it this time. I didn’t struggle to stay there despite his demands. I simply let go.
6
It hurt. It hurt to move. It hurt to think. It hurt to feel, but I did it anyway. I struggled for a sense of place, of time, but there were no familiar voices, only noise. Constant machinelike thrumming.
I was no longer cold. In fact, I was hot. Sweltering hot. Through my confusion, I could hear a beeping. I homed in on that rhythmic sound until I could count in time with the beats.
With each beep came a recollection, a flash so jumbled and terrifying that I screamed inside my head, begging to be set free. The rain, the spinning of the tires, and the smell … the caustic, burning smell of gas. The hail coating the road, blurring the lane lines. Me jerking the wheel. The screech of brakes. The tree and the sound of our panicked cries as the branch shattered the windshield.
I could still hear the music playing on the radio, the annoying jingle for the local car wash circling in my brain like a rusted-out hamster wheel. I wanted it to stop, wanted to claw out my ears, my burning throat, and my hiccuping mind with a spoon.
I tried to call for help, but no sound came out. My hands grasped at the empty air as I tried to pull myself from the memories, from the smell of blood and burned rubber and the sharp sting of glass shards embedded in my skin. I could feel my arms and legs. They were tight, as if someone had tied a rope around them and pulled, to be cruel.
Something snapped, my body and mind realigning themselves in one horrifying jolt. I found my voice and cried out, stuck in an imaginary world so vivid, so toxic, that I would have sworn it was real.
“Hey, calm down. You’re alive. You’re safe.”
Oh thank God. I knew that voice. It was distantly familiar.
Blinking, I took in the room. I could move now, whatever had had me trapped inside my mind was gone. Cursing the dull ache in my head, I turned toward his words, his face blurring into view. I knew him, or at least, I knew I should know him. His eyes, his gentle tone, everything about him poked at something locked deep in my pounding head.
He’d pulled a chair up beside my bed and was sitting in it, his head cradled in his hands. His shoulders sagged and his hands shook. He was pale, and judging from the sunken quality of his eyes, I gathered he hadn’t slept in days. Wait … days?
“Hey, beautiful. Welcome back,” he whispered.
I reached to wipe my eyes, but a searing pain blasted up my arm. Black spots flashed across my vision. I could feel the tears streaming down my face, but I couldn’t do anything about them. The boy placed a gentle hand over mine and used the other to wipe away my tears before kissing my forehead.
It didn’t fix my vision completely. I blinked a few more times, hoping to clear the last of the shadows, but all that did was squeeze more tears out and down my cheeks. The machines, the call button on my bed … the entire room around me was off balance, and trying to focus on it made my head ache more.
The boy pulled back, and I searched his face for a spark of knowledge. I hoped he’d tell me his name, prayed he’d say my name. I desperately needed him to remind me who I was and why I was here.
“You scared me. You scared everyone. We thought we’d lost you,” he continued. His eyes were glossy, and one tear managed to slip out before he blinked more of them back. Why was he crying?
I fought against the heavy fog settling over my body and moved my head, thinking for sure I would see someone else in the room. I clearly remembered two screams—one mine, one not—and eyes staring at me. But there was no other bed, no other girl, just a long windowsill and a small table on wheels, both of which were buried underneath flowers. Maybe it was a dream, a horribly vivid, warped dream.
I counted fifteen vases of flowers on the windowsill alone before I gave up and looked at the arrangement closest to me. It was sitting on the rolling table, the card tucked into a massive display of white roses.
The boy followed my line of sight. “Here,” he said as he handed me the card. “They’re from me.”
I opened the envelope, not bothering to skim the handwritten message. What I wanted was to know who he was: Alex.
I turned that name over in my mind. It sounded familiar. I didn’t know how or why, but it was a place to start.
“Alex.” My voice cracked, and I had to swallow twice to accomplish that weak sound.
“Shh … relax. Don’t try to talk,” he said as he smoothed the hair off my face. “You broke some ribs and dislocated your shoulder, you hit your head pretty hard, too. They had to do surgery to set your wrist, but the doctors said it should be fine.”
My eyes widened as I listened to him talk about my injuries, automatically thinking about the other girl, sitting in the car’s passenger seat. I wondered if she was as banged up as me, if she was here, in the same hospital.
Turning my head, I saw the tubes, four of them in total, attached to me. I followed one to my finger, flexing my hand around the plastic device that held it trapped. There was one adhered to my chest, and one running into my nose. The last one was jammed into my arm.
When I blinked, I could feel a pull above my right eye. It stung more than anything. I guessed there was a bandage there, stitches maybe, but I would need a mirror to confirm. My left arm was heavy, like it was encased in bricks, and my wrist ached with a dull, throbbing pain that was bone deep.
Carefully, I reached my good arm behind me and tried to push myself up. My head spun, everything around me—the flowers, Alex, my own body—dissolving in a blur. My stomach churned, and I fought against the pain, swallowing hard to keep the bile-tinged water coming up my throat from spilling out.
Unwilling to move an inch, I frantically searched the room with my eyes. I needed a bathroom, a trash can, a plastic bag, anything to unload the contents of my stomach in. Alex noticed and shoved a small plastic bowl underneath my chin and grabbed for my hair. I didn’t care about my hair or who was holding the bowl, I wanted the pain to end.
Alex didn’t say a word as I heaved. He rubbed my back and reminded me to breathe. Easier said than done.
Carefully, he settled the pillows around me. The pain was receding, slowly leaving me with each passing breath. I found the vases on the windowsill again, my eyes moving from one to the next, counting as I went.
“You can stop counting,” Alex said as he tossed the paper towel he was using to dry his hands into the trash and took a seat next to me on the bed. “There are thirty-seven of them here, more at home.”
I shook my head in confusion. How could I know thirty-seven people when I couldn’t remember who I was?
“They’re from our friends. Jenna, Keith, some of the guys on the soccer team. I think Coach Riley sent you some, too. Everyone’s here, been camped out in the hall for the past two days.”
I didn’t recognize any of those people, and had he said two days?
I turned my head toward the hall windows, but the curtains were drawn, the door closed. There was a whiteboard stuck to the wall there, a bunch of numbers scribbled next to what I thought were times. Above it was my name. I think.
Maddy Lawton.
“Do you know where you are, what happened?” Alex asked. He looked worried, his eyes darting between mine and the whiteboard I was studying.
I shook my head. I could guess from the bed, the white walls, and the wires hooked up to me that I was in the hospital. I remembered being in an accident, a bad one. But who I was, how long I’d been here, and who the girl in the car with me was … yeah, that I had no idea.
“Do you know who you are?” His
voice was barely a whisper, shaky and uncertain.
I looked up at the whiteboard again, then down to my wrist. There was a plastic bracelet there with my name and a slew of numbers. “Maddy Lawton.”
He smiled at my words. It was weak and tentative, but a confirmation that I was correct nonetheless.
“I’m Maddy.” The whispered words felt foreign on my lips, but Alex nodded, the mere mention of my name lighting up his face. “Where is the other girl … the one that was in the car with me? Where is she? Is she okay?”
“Ella,” Alex said, concern replacing the relief I’d seen in his eyes a moment earlier. “Your sister’s name was Ella.”
It sounded so simple, so perfectly right. “Ella.”
“Maddy?” Alex was standing now, staring at me, waiting for me to do or say something. Problem was, I had no idea what that was. “Do you know who I am?”
I did, but not because I felt connected or drawn to him, rather because it was written on the card he’d shown me. Fear clawed its way through my system, the unnerving sensation that something was off … that I was off. It hit me, the realization that my entire knowledge base consisted of those two facts and nothing more. I knew who he was and who I was, but nothing more.
“You’re Alex,” I said as I stared down at his hand. It was locked in mine, his thumb gently tracing the lines of my veins. The touch was tender, soft, like the look in his eyes. Something you wouldn’t do to someone you didn’t know … really know. “And you’re my boyfriend, right?”
My expression must have shifted because his next words quickly tumbled out as if he was searching for the safe thing to say. “Everything’s going to be okay, Maddy. You’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna get your parents. They’re outside in the hall, talking to your doctor.”
“No, wait. Where’s the other girl? My sister…” I had to pause, swallow down my pain to get those simple words out. “Where’s Ella?”
I watched the lines of his face smooth out, his calm, soothing tone forced. “It’s gonna be okay, Maddy. None of this is your fault.”
My fault? “What? What do you mean my fault?”
He shook his head. The fact that he wouldn’t explain was answer enough.
The brief silence that followed was all-consuming, and I slowly started to piece things together. I didn’t hear the cry that escaped my throat, my mind too trapped in the shattering image of that girl … of Ella in the seat next to me, her blue eyes staring lifelessly at me as they pried her out of the car.
“Don’t cry. Please, Maddy, don’t cry. Nobody blames you. The roads were wet and the car slid. There was nothing you could do to stop it.”
He reached out to me, and I moved back. “No! Don’t touch me.” I didn’t want to be comforted or held. I wanted him to tell me what had happened, why I couldn’t remember anything, anything except that girl’s dead eyes.
7
Alex left me there sobbing, unable to form a coherent sentence. I saw the terror in his eyes when he finally got up and scrambled for the door. He had begged me to calm down, promised me everything would be fine. He was wrong, so wrong. Nothing would ever be fine again.
If what he was slowly trying to ease me into realizing was true, then the girl next to me in the car, the one I killed, was my own sister. Nothing … not the terrifying inability to remember who I was, not even the pain that was lancing through my head could compete with that dark truth.
“She’s awake,” I heard him say. The sound in the hall was deafening. Cheers mingled with cries. I saw a girl make for my door. I couldn’t pull her name from the tattered recesses of my mind. Didn’t need to because the swell of emotion that came from a glimpse of her face was more than enough. Hatred clawed at me, a complete and bone-deep hatred solely directed at her. Thankfully, Alex stopped her at the door and gently eased her aside to let someone in.
The door closed, blocking out the people in the hall, and the smell of coffee flooded the room. I looked up at the man, stared straight at him and prayed he would somehow make sense of this for me.
He stopped midstep and watched me. I prayed he would see the plea in my eyes, would say or do something to jar the simple recognition of who I was and what had happened back into place.
The man dropped his cup, black coffee covering his shoes as he stood there frozen for what seemed like an eternity. His shoulders shook, and it was then that I saw his tears. He didn’t do anything to try to hide them. I swear I saw a brief flash of confusion cross his face, as if he were trying to see something that wasn’t there, as if, like me, he was trying to fit what he’d been told into a box that wasn’t the right size.
“Mr. Lawton?” It was Alex’s worried tone that tore the man’s eyes from mine. “She seems confused, like she’s not sure who she is or why she’s here. I know it’s probably the pain meds they gave her—the doctor said she may be a bit hazy for a while—but she’s asking questions about…” He drifted off, the pity I heard in his voice overwhelming. “I don’t know what she remembers, and I thought … I didn’t want to tell her … I thought maybe you and Mrs. Lawton…”
The older man’s confusion disappeared, and he held up his hand for Alex to stop talking. He walked over to my bed and carefully sat down. His hand hovered for a second, trembling, before he wiped away my tears. “How’s my sweet girl?”
I leaned into his hand, wondering how a simple gesture could bring me so much solace. “Why am I here? What did I do?” The questions flew from my mouth, each one calling forth more unease, more uncertainty.
“Everything is fine, Maddy. Your mother and I promise you that everything is going to be fine.”
I winced at his words, the name Maddy tearing through me with such fury that I forgot to breathe. I would’ve gladly stayed that way, let the last breath of air leave my body as I withered away from the guilt that plagued me. A guilt I didn’t understand. “Where’s my sister?”
“She’s gone, sweetheart.” He tried hard to hide his pain, the glistening of tears I could see rimming his eyes, but I heard the hitch in his voice, the small shudder that accompanied those three heavy words.
My breath caught, setting off a whirl of high-pitched alarms. The first warning bell sounded, and Alex’s face went pale. Dad was there, his hands hovering over me looking for some unknown hurt to soothe. My mother came barreling into the room, a doctor and two nurses close on her heels. One nurse went for the IV, the other to the machine attached to the wall. The doctor went for me. Mom pushed him aside.
“I won’t lose you, Maddy.” Her hands were on either side of my face, her eyes so close to mine that I could see the specks of gold hidden in the green. “Look at me. Look at me, Maddy!”
I did. I opened my eyes wide and stared at her. Anger, determination, maybe fear … I don’t know what I saw, but the intensity of it speared me, kept my thoughts from lapsing into that dark space, and my eyes focused solely on her. “God already took one of my daughters. He can take anything else he wants from me, but not you, Maddy. Never you. Do you understand me? Now breathe!”
I did, not because I wanted to live, but because Mom told me to … She ordered me to. My breath hitched as I struggled to fill my lungs, and I gasped as the air burned its way down my throat.
The doctor circled around to the other side of the bed. He had my wrist in his hand as the nurse played with the dial on my IV. Mom ignored them all, completely focused on me.
“That’s it, Maddy,” Mom coaxed me, her calming tone encouraging me to live, her eyes demanding it. The pitch of the alarms slowly eased as I took one choking breath after another. Mom’s voice echoed the sound, her tone becoming more soothing with each passing second.
She pulled me into her arms. I couldn’t hear what she was whispering past the dark question swirling in my head. I fought against her hold and turned. Dad was standing by the door, his hand braced on the wall. He looked like he was about to collapse. Alex had—he’d crumpled to the ground at my father’s feet and was muttering something about let
ting Maddy live.
Everybody in this room adored me, had literally gone to pieces at the thought of me dying. But what about the other one? What about Ella? Who was with her when she died? Who was with her now?
8
It was quiet. The people gathered in the hallway had gone home yesterday afternoon, and the nurses who had been checking my vitals had eased back, coming in only when one of my alarms sounded, which was pretty much never. They wanted me to rest, or at least that is what they said, even offering to give me something to help me sleep. I didn’t want to close my eyes, never mind sleep, but I took the meds anyway, hoping they would take me to a place my dreams couldn’t reach. They didn’t. The nightmares were always there, lurking, waiting for me to close my eyes and let go.
I rolled my head to one side, the scent of bleach and stale coffee stinging my senses. I’d grown used to it, actually found it comforting. It kept me grounded.
Blinking long and hard, I resumed my careful study of the ceiling. It hadn’t changed in the three gruesomely long hours I’d been staring at it. It was white, a large beige streak running down the center where there obviously used to be a divider. They must have taken two separate rooms and mashed them into one. It hadn’t worked; the scar was still there for everyone to see.
A lone tear traced a path down my cheek. It felt good to cry when nobody was watching. Every time I woke up, Alex was there, holding my hand, assuring me that in a few days everything would be okay. I wished I had his faith.
Right now, he was sleeping in the chair next to my bed. Mom and Dad were there, too. They were sleeping, their bodies crammed onto the love seat in the corner. Dad looked worn, tense, his body fidgeting while he rested. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was trapped in a series of nightmares like I was.
The door to my room scraped open and the night nurse walked in, surprised, I think, to see me awake. “Not tired?” she asked as she fiddled with the machine that tracked my vitals. “I can give you something else if you want.”
The Secrets We Keep Page 4
