by Chelsie Hill
Rob’s house was packed with people from school who were talking, dancing around, making out, as well as a bunch of randoms who didn’t look familiar at all. His neighbors? People from Santiago High across town? Strangers at the mall he invited into his home? I had no idea. In between the randoms, though, I did see a lot of people I considered friends. Kayla and Ashley from dance. Garrett, Lara, and Jason, part of the crew Curt and I sat with at lunch every day. I waved and smiled and said hellos to them as I passed, but the greetings felt empty. I wasn’t in the mood for mindless chitchat. I just needed to talk to Curt. He was the only one who could make me feel better right now.
Or Amanda.
The thought popped up from somewhere in the very back corner of my mind as I washed my hands in the bathroom. If Amanda were here, she would know exactly what to say. When my grandma died back in fifth grade, Amanda came over to my house and we spent the whole night eating ice cream and watching movies to keep my mind off the emptiness and loss that had moved into my heart. She always knew how to turn my mood around.
Grabbing my phone from my back pocket, I hovered my thumb over her speed dial. I couldn’t bring myself to press it, though. I hadn’t invited her to this party, because I knew she wouldn’t know anyone and she’d just be bored. She didn’t like these people, and I was tired of explaining why I hung out with them. Despite the happy face I added to the end of her text, I hadn’t wanted her here. I couldn’t call her. Not now.
I slipped my phone back in my pocket and let out a long sigh as I left the bathroom and headed back down the hall. A line had formed, and the second person waiting, staring at the pictures on the wall, was Curt.
“Babe,” he said, and pulled me into a hug. Beer was strong on his breath, but so was the smell of his cinnamon gum. He wasn’t too drunk. Yet. “Check out these pictures of Baby Rob. He really should have taken these down.”
I turned to face the wall, but I grabbed Curt’s arms and kept them wrapped tightly around me as I scanned the little photo gallery. Picture after picture of Rob, his little sister, Reese, and their mom and dad. The backgrounds of the pictures were all different—the four of them at Disneyland on the Mad Tea Party, riding horses along some beach, cheesing in front of Mount Rushmore. But even though the destinations were all different, the pictures were all pretty much the same: Rob and Reese and their mom and dad. All together. A family.
Curt laughed. “Look at that hair. I guess there’s a reason he didn’t put these on Facebook, huh?”
“Aww, I like them.” I said, elbowing Curt gently in the ribs. “I can’t believe his parents took him to Paris.” I pointed to a photo in the middle of one of the framed collages that featured a wee Rob riding on his dad’s shoulders in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Curt snorted. “That’s not Paris,” he said. “That’s Vegas. And look how little Reese was. Who takes a baby to Las Vegas? That’s nuts.”
“They like to travel as a family,” I said, my voice thick with grief. “That’s a good thing.” I thought back to the cruise I went on to Mexico with Mom and Dad over the summer, and it hit me that it was probably our last family vacation. Ever. If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have spent half the time whining about having no cell on the ship and not being able to text Curt. I missed out on our last opportunity for happy family photos. It was over.
Before I could get too lost in my regret, the bathroom door swung open, and it was Curt’s turn. “I have to pee,” he said, “so you go grab that lounge chair, okay? I’ll be right there.”
Fortunately Jenny had moved away from the sliding glass door, so the path to outside was free and clear. There was definitely an unseasonable autumn chill in the air, so aside from the small group surrounding Rob’s fire pit, it was pretty empty outside. I snagged a lounge chair, and, leaning back on the cushion, I stared up at the stars in the night sky and replayed my conversation with Mom over and over again, trying to make sense of the strange and scary direction my life had taken in the past few hours.
After about five minutes, I realized Curt should have been out there by now. I grabbed my phone and texted him. HEY BABY, I’M OUTSIDE. Maybe he didn’t see me when he came out, because I was lying down.
Ten minutes later, I started wondering if he was having some bathroom troubles or something. It wasn’t really how I wanted to think about my hot boyfriend, but what else could be taking so long? YOU OK IN THERE? I texted.
I didn’t want to leave the lounge chair, because this was our meeting spot, and the inside of the house was so crowded, I might never track him down in there. He’s the one who said to meet here … right? Something must have happened. Maybe he was trying to hide from Jenny Roy. I could understand that. I would’ve been, too.
Fifteen minutes later.
WHERE R U?
After twenty minutes, I broke down and called him. No answer.
At that point I had imagined every terrible thing that could have happened to him between the bathroom and the yard. He’d seen how upset I was, right? He’d told me to wait out here. Why didn’t he come?
I jumped up from the lounge chair and paced circles around it. Now my panic over my parents was compounded with a Curt-fueled freakout.
A trip back through the ginormous house to where I’d started told me what I needed to know. Because there was Curt, just like when I first walked in, flip-cupping away as if I wasn’t having a total emotional breakdown, alone, on a chaise longue. Well, he was almost just like when I first walked in. Two important things had changed.
One, he was now obviously more drunk than he’d been when I left him at the bathroom; his voice was louder, his movements were more exaggerated, like he was putting on a show, and most of the beer from one of the party cups was dribbling down the front of his shirt.
And, two, Jenny Roy now had her arms clasped snugly around his waist.
CHAPTER 4
Jenny Roy was not your typical Mean Girl. I mean, she wasn’t at all one of those awful chicks who pushed freshmen into lockers and made catty comments about every girl behind her back. People actually seemed to like her, for the most part. But for some reason I was on her bad side, and her bad side was pretty freaking bad. Word was that she had liked Curt since the dawn of time, and she took it as some sort of personal insult when I started dating him. She’d been pretty awful to me ever since, and I’d been trying to just ignore her because I didn’t have time for that nonsense.
But this. This was way too much.
“Curt.” I wasn’t trying to be loud or cause a scene, but my inside voice wasn’t very effective at catching his attention. “Curt!” My voice grew louder now, but it didn’t get Curt to look over. Just Jenny.
She tugged on his sleeve, but she stared at me the entire time. “Curt. Someone’s looking for you.”
“What?” He looked down at her like he only just realized that she had boa-constricted herself around him, and he shook her free. “What’d you say?”
She didn’t seem bothered by the fact that she was just shooed off like a fly. “Nothing.”
I walked over to him now, since he seemed determined to ignore me. “Curt,” I said as I got closer. “What are you doing?” I tried not to sound like the overreacting Overly Attached Girlfriend, but keeping the hurt out of my voice was an impossible task. “You said you were going to meet me outside. I waited for you.”
“Oh. Sorry, babe.” He didn’t take his eyes off Rob Chang and Nick, one of the other water polo guys, who were taking shots of something out of each other’s shoes. Gross. “The flip cup teams were uneven and they needed me for a second. We kicked ass.”
“But you told me you were going to come outside and talk to me.” A whine crept into my voice. “I told you I needed you, and you left me out there so you could keep getting drunk and groped by Jenny Roy.”
“Let’s go now,” he slurred, grabbing my arm and yanking it. I knew he was drunk, and he didn’t mean to be rough with me, but his hand clasped around my biceps still stung. I wrenched m
y arm loose from his grip. “Sorry, babe,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean to grab you like that. Just a little wobbly.” He laughed. I didn’t.
“I can’t talk to you like this,” I said. My voice grew louder again. “I told you I really needed you and you just left me sitting out there.”
“Babe, chill,” he said. “I told you we can go outside now.”
“Don’t tell me to chill.” Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and all their drunk eyes turned to us. The music still played loudly and conversations still happened, but we had become a focal point.
I leaned up and whispered, “You told me to talk to you about the personal stuff that’s bothering me. I was trying to do that. And this is how you act? When I finally decide to open up?”
I hoped he would whisper back, but instead he replied for the whole room to hear. “You really think the middle of a party is the right time to open up to me about personal stuff?” He laughed, like me trying to talk to him about what I just found out about my parents was up there at “Channing Tatum winning an Oscar” levels of ridiculous.
“Oooh,” one of the water polo guys taunted. “She wants to open up to you right now, Curt. You better get on that.”
“You need to use my bedroom, Mitchell?” Rob Chang said, and laughed.
My face burned. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Curt ditching me was bad enough, but now the whole party was making fun of me.
“Stop it, guys,” Curt said, waving his arms around. “Don’t talk about my girl like that.” But it was too late. They were all laughing. At me.
I tightened my hands into fists and let them out slowly. “I’m leaving.”
“What? Why? What’s your problem, Kara?”
“She’s just wasted,” Jenny said from the corner. “You shouldn’t listen to her drunk nonsense.”
My head snapped over in her direction, and I shot her the dirtiest look I had in my arsenal of stink eyes. “What are you talking about? I haven’t had a single thing to drink.”
“Whatever.” Snark dripped off her tongue.
“She’s right,” Curt said. “You should have some water and chill out.”
“I’m not drunk!” I yelled. “And I can’t believe you right now. You’re the one who needs to sober up and remember how to be a decent boyfriend.” My words to Curt shocked me as they came out of my mouth, but it was true. I’d been to parties with him when he was drinking before, and he’d never been like this. But I’d always been having fun right along with him. I’d never needed him like I needed him tonight. I tried to open up to him, and he let me down big-time. “I’m going. Call me when you get your head out of your ass.”
“You probably shouldn’t drive like this!” Jenny shouted after me.
I flipped her my middle finger.
Once I was outside and the crisp night air hit me in the face, I started to calm down. A few deep, soothing breaths lowered my anxiety level, and I even considered turning around to go back inside the party and try to talk things out with Curt.
No, I thought. He’ll probably come after me in just a second. It’s way better to talk to him out here than inside with all those people watching, anyway. The night air will sober him up, and we can have a normal conversation.
I leaned against a dirty Jeep parked in the driveway and listened to the sounds of the party still pumping from the house as I waited. And waited.
Curt didn’t come.
This was the second time he left me waiting tonight. No, wait. The third, actually. This time he didn’t actually tell me he was coming, but I’d assumed. He told his friends not to make fun of me, but he let me run off upset? Really?
Fine, I thought. I don’t need this tonight.
Fighting back tears, I kicked off my heels and walked barefoot over to my car in the ditch. First my mom told me that my parents were probably getting a divorce, and now my boyfriend let me down twice, let himself get groped by a girl whose mission in life was to replace me like a trash bag, and embarrassed me in front of all his friends. My mind was blown by how much I’d been looking forward to this terrible night, so much that I couldn’t even be bothered to worry about what nasty foot fungus I was probably picking up as I traipsed around barefoot.
I buckled myself into my car, and my stomach reacted with one of the loudest growls a human had ever made. I’d gotten so upset with my mom that I didn’t grab any pizza before I left the house, and there had been nothing remotely edible in Rob Chang’s kitchen. I hadn’t eaten anything since my post-rehearsal protein bar. No wonder my stomach was talking to me.
It’s not like I could go home yet, anyway. I hadn’t been gone long enough to see a movie with Amanda, and I didn’t want to make up some story to Mom about why I was home so early. So it looked like a solo date at Taco Bell was in order. And I’d take the super-long way so I could sort through all this drama with a good drive.
Tires screeching, I pulled out of the ditch and got on the road, my mind shuffling through all the facts of the evening.
If my parents were getting a divorce, was I going to have to choose whom to live with? Would I have to go back and forth between them? Would we have to go to court, or was that just on TV?
If Mom’s big problem was that she didn’t know what job to get or what to do with herself now that she was done raising me, how would she support herself without my dad? Was alimony really a thing? Was there more to this story that I hadn’t heard them arguing about?
Was one of them going to get married again? Was I going to have random stepsiblings?
Would they still be able to send me to college?
I felt sort of selfish for a minute as I realized these thoughts were all about me, me, me. But my parents were obviously thinking only about themselves here. Someone in this situation had to think about me.
And what happened with Curt back there at the party? This was a side of him I hadn’t seen before. I hated taking off on such a negative note, but he was being such a drunk A-hole, and I had no experience dealing with this version of him.
Even still, I didn’t want to leave things like this. I waited until I pulled to a stop at a red light, and I grabbed my phone from the center console.
WE NEED TO TALK. CALL ME WHEN YOU’RE SOBER. XOXO
My thumb hovered over the screen for a second, then I hit Send. Hopefully by the time he sobered up, I would be calmed down. We could talk like two normal people and put our first big fight behind us.
I tossed my phone on the seat as the light turned green. My stomach growled again, and I relaxed at the thought of the burrito waiting for me at the Taco Bell on the other side of the stoplight.
I was halfway through the intersection when there was a crash and an impact.
Glass shattered.
Metal crunched.
And something slammed.
A car. A car, out of control and coming from the other direction, plowed right into the side of my car. Impact. Full force. It didn’t stop until it hit me.
I jerked forward, I screamed, I smelled smoke and heard a crash and felt pain shooting through my body.
But before I could make sense of anything that happened, everything went black.
CHAPTER 5
The sounds caused a pull, a tugging sensation from somewhere inside me that told me to open my eyes. They seemed to poke at me from far away, sometimes loud, sometimes quiet. Voices in hushed tones, a consistent beeping, the scraping of metal against metal, a shrill squeak.
Then, piled on top of the sounds, there were the smells. The smell of clean. Something medicine-y. Other scents, familiar, but out of context, and something inside me told me to look around and see where I was. I didn’t want to open my eyes. It didn’t feel like the natural thing to do, and when my eyelids tried to separate, it felt like prying an electric garage door open with my bare hands.
Waking up shouldn’t be this difficult, I thought, so I gave up and decided to keep sleeping. Sleep was good. But there was light now, flooding the othe
r sides of my eyelids, bright and welcoming. And the voices started making sense, sounds formed into words, and I knew I had to open my eyes, even though it took so much effort, and I was still so, so tired.
I pried my eyes open and the light was brighter, harsh now, and overwhelming. Squinting, I tried to focus on what was in front of me. I blinked and blinked and blinked in an attempt to focus, trying to make sense of the light and the shapes and the sounds and the smells.
And it slowly started to come together. My parents. It was my parents next to me, saying my name, leaning in close. They seemed excited, clutching each other and sort of freaking out. As all this processed in my head, I wondered, What the heck are they doing in my bedroom, watching me sleep like this? The awkwardness made my face crinkle up, and I wanted them gone. But as I blinked more, the rest of the room came into focus. Instead of my dresser and my closet, I saw machines and curtains and plants and ugly wallpaper—all things that told me I wasn’t in my bedroom at all.
Where was I?
Mom leaned close and clutched my arm with ferocity, like she needed to make sure I was real. “Kara,” she whispered in a soft tone that didn’t match her iron grip. “Sweetie. You’re awake.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but words seemed stuck in my throat. My tongue was dry, and all I could manage was a thick, garbled “heknjd” that scraped on the way out. I wasn’t even sure what the word was supposed to be, so I tried again. “Mom.” There. At least that was a word. What was wrong with me?
“Oh, thank God,” Dad said, and he leaned forward and grabbed my arm, too. “How are you, honey?”
Blinking, I tried again to focus on the room. Nope, definitely not my bedroom. My eyes started to uncloud, but my mind wasn’t there yet.
