this.
No way.
A second passed, maybe two, and I...I shattered like I was nothing more than spun glass. There was a sound that reminded me of a wounded, dying animal, and it took me a moment to realize that it was me making it. It was me who was crying so hard I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t breathe around the pain engulfing every sense. The tears stung raw areas on my face and clogged my throat, and I couldn’t stop.
“Baby. Sweetie,” Mom said, her hands on me. “You need to calm down. You need to take deep, even breaths.”
But I couldn’t, because they were dead, and it was like a violent summer storm erupting inside me, unpredictable and severe. The tears kept coming and they didn’t stop until there were strange voices in the room followed by a stinging warmth in my veins, and then there were no more tears.
There was nothing.
* * *
Much later, Mom touched my arm again, and when I opened my eyes, I was still in the ICU room. The antiseptic smell still clogged my nostrils. Machines still beeped. I was here, and there was no escaping what that meant.
Mom was staring at me, her eyes no longer filled with tears. I didn’t think she or my sister had moved one spot while I lay in that bed. The sedative, whatever it was that they’d added to my IV, was sluggishly leaving my body.
“I need to ask you something,” Mom said after a couple of moments.
Lori rose from the chair and walked to the foot of the bed. “Mom, not now.”
Mom ignored her as she focused on me. “They’re saying that there was alcohol involved. That the driver—that Cody was possibly intoxicated.”
My brows furrowed together. Cody had been driving? That didn’t make sense. I didn’t think he’d driven to Keith’s party, because he’d talked about taking Sebastian’s Jeep, unless... “Whose...car were we in?”
“Chris’s,” answered Lori. She folded her arms across her chest.
“And...and Cody was driving his car?” None of this made sense.
She nodded. “It was in the news that alcohol was suspected. They even mentioned the party at Keith’s house. Apparently the police went there that night. It’s been...”
To Keith’s? I lifted my good arm and the IV tugged. I dropped it back to the bed. Why would he have been driving Chris’s car?
Then I remembered what Abbi and Megan had said when they’d gotten to the party. They’d believed Chris had already been drinking, and I hadn’t...I hadn’t even thought about it. There hadn’t even been a flicker of concern or a question of what the hell was he doing driving to Keith’s like that. I’d been...more concerned with what was going on with Sebastian.
“Were they drinking?” Mom asked.
I’d seen Cody with a drink—a red plastic cup and a bottle. I remembered that. I remembered... I remembered thinking—
I wasn’t so sure if he was fine or not, but the guys were staring at me and Megan was pushing me, going on and on about the ten-piece nugget meal she was going to murder. Maybe I could talk to Abbi and catch a ride with whoever she was going home with, but she was in a pretty deep conversation with Keith, oddly enough, and I had a feeling she wasn’t planning to leave anytime soon. There was this tiny voice in the back of my head, coming from the center of my stomach, but I...I was being stupid.
I had gotten in the car.
“Mom, she doesn’t remember the accident. How can she answer that question?” Lori pointed out, but did I really not remember?
Mom stared at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly, and she just lost it. Her face bleached of all color and she started to stand but immediately sat—fell—back into the chair. “What were you thinking, Lena?”
I opened my mouth, my mind running a million miles a minute. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t understand. Oh God, this couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Mom,” Lori said, coming back around the bed.
“You got into that car. That is what happened. You got into that car, and that boy, they said he’d been drinking. The police said they could smell it on all of you. And you—you could’ve died. They died.” Mom rose suddenly and stayed up this time, balling her fist to the center of her chest. “I love you and I am counting every lucky star in the sky right now that you’re alive, but I’m so disappointed. I raised you...your father and I raised you...to never, ever get behind the wheel after drinking or get into the car when someone had been drinking.”
“Mom,” whispered Lori, her cheeks wet again. So were mine.
“Did you know he was drunk?” Mom demanded, her voice thready.
Maybe I should drive?
“I don’t know.” My voice shook as another memory poked free. Seriously. I’m fine. I’ve driven this road a million times. I knew that voice. That was Cody—no, that had been Cody. But it couldn’t be, because he wouldn’t have driven drunk with us in the car, because who would do that? Chris had earlier and you didn’t even care, whispered a tiny voice in the back of my head. But this was different. I wouldn’t have gotten in the car. I knew I wouldn’t have. And I wouldn’t have let him drive.
That wasn’t who I was.
I wasn’t that kind of person.
I wasn’t.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The police showed up Tuesday night.
And that was how I realized that it was Tuesday, three days past Saturday. Three days since my friends had...had died and I’d been asleep. I’d been alive and been asleep.
The cops walked into my hospital room, two of them, and icy fear pooled into my stomach. I was petrified, my wild gaze darting from my mom to the two men in light blue uniforms and weird hats. A nurse was with them, and before they could even introduce themselves, she warned, “You got about ten to fifteen minutes before we need to give her another round of meds. She does not need to be upset right now.”
The older trooper removed his hat and nodded, revealing graying sandy-colored hair. “We won’t take up a lot of time.”
The nurse shot them another stern look before leaving the room.
I swallowed as the old man introduced himself to me and Mom.
“I’m Trooper Daniels. This is Trooper Allen.” He gestured at the younger dark-skinned man, who’d also removed his hat. “We are investigating the crash from Saturday night and we have some questions if you’re up for it.”
“I don’t know if she’s ready.” Mom looked at me wearily. “She only just woke up this morning and found out about her friends...”
Trooper Allen bowed his head. “We are truly sorry for your loss.” He held his hat at his waist, just below his navel. “We have a few questions that we hope you’ll be able to answer so we can fill in some gaps.”
I didn’t want to do this. The tears were already snaking back up on me, but I cleared my throat. I didn’t think I really had a choice. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Trooper Daniels moved to the side of the bed. “We need to know everything that you remember. Do you think you can do that?”
Closing my eyes, I wanted to be anywhere other than I was, and I didn’t want to talk about what I was starting to remember, but this was the police.
So I did.
As I spoke, I started crying again, because the look on Mom’s face screamed disappointment and hurt. The cops had little to no reaction as they peppered the room with brisk questions.
“Was alcohol being served at this party?”
“Were Keith’s parents home at the time and were they aware that you were drinking?”
“Do you remember seeing Cody drinking?”
“Was Chris too intoxicated to drive his own vehicle?”
“How much did you have to drink?”
Some of these questions I suspected they already knew the answers to, but they were checking my answers to see if they matched. When they stopped, I felt like I had to say something. The words were crawling up my throat.
“We... I didn’t think anything would happen,” I whispered, voice and
soul and heart and everything about me feeling frayed and broken. “We didn’t think.”
“People so rarely do nowadays,” Trooper Daniels responded, voice heavy. “Especially kids your age. We see it far too often.”
And that was...that.
Especially kids your age. Like it was nothing at the end of the day. They left the room, and all I could do was stare after them. The room was left in silence. This horrible, nerve-stretching silence. I closed my eyes, because I couldn’t bear to look at Mom, to see what I knew she was thinking.
I was that person.
Reckless.
Irresponsible.
At fault in every sense of the word.
* * *
The meds they administered into the IV made everything...easier and I was just able to lie there. I didn’t hurt. I didn’t have to talk. Lori and Mom were silent, sitting in their chairs, watching reruns of some show.
My brain didn’t shut down as I lay there.
But I didn’t think about that night.
I couldn’t think about that.
As I lay there, feeling like I was floating a good foot or two off the bed, I remembered a different night.
The last time we all were at the lake, back in July.
It had been the weekend of the Fourth of July, and we’d all been together—all of us. Someone had carted out an old charbroil grill, and Sebastian had the back of his Jeep open and the music turned up high.
I sat with Abbi, Dary and Megan as Keith attempted to use snow skis on the lake. Everyone was laughing except Abbi. Her eyes... Her eyes were wide as she murmured over and over, “He’s going to kill himself. We’re all about to watch him die.”
But Keith hadn’t died.
He’d fallen and yelled that he’d broken his butt or something. He’d dragged himself out of the lake, holding up his swimming trunks. Phillip and Chris had been waiting for him. I didn’t remember seeing Cody there.
And in my memory, I’d been busy watching Sebastian, who was standing on the dock, talking to another guy. I’d watched him a lot that night, because I knew he was leaving soon, so my gaze kept finding him.
I wanted to change what I did that night. I wanted to look away from him. I wanted to watch Phillip and Chris. I wanted to turn my head to the right and look at Megan. I wished I’d listened more closely to what she was chattering on about, because now I couldn’t remember. But I knew she looked happy and she was smiling.
And when she got up to join Phillip by the lake’s edge, I wanted to call her back. And I wanted to follow them, forever hold the sight of them standing side by side, but I didn’t. I stayed where I was while someone across the lake let off fireworks.
I tried to change my memory.
But then there had been Sebastian. As the sky lit up and the air echoed, he’d draped his arm over my shoulders. Another firework had shot into the air on a smooth whistle, exploding into a shower of bright red sparks. The entire right side of my body had been warm and pressed against Sebastian. I’d rested my cheek in the crook of his shoulder as the sky flashed, because there was nothing awkward between us then, and I remembered thinking that...that life couldn’t be any better than right then, that moment.
And I had no idea how right I’d been.
* * *
Wednesday morning Mom broke the news. “Your father is on his way.”
“Why?” I asked, staring at the ceiling.
“He’s your father,” she responded, sounding tired.
That wasn’t much of an explanation. He was my father, but he sure as hell hadn’t done a lot of fathering. Why start now?
A horrible thought formed: if I’d been in the hospital since Saturday night, in the ICU, and it was now Wednesday, was he just now on his way?
Sounded so much like Dad that I wanted to laugh but couldn’t.
“He’s driving from Seattle,” she explained, obviously thinking the same thing I had. “You know how he is. Refuses to fly. He should be here tonight, tomorrow morning by the latest.”
I didn’t know my father anymore, and right now I really didn’t have the brain space to figure him out. I didn’t want to see him, but I also didn’t have anything to really say about it.
I just wanted to be left alone with my memories instead of everything that had changed. I didn’t want these new memories erasing everything.
Mom and Lori were taking shifts staying with me. One would drive the forty-some-minute ride home, check the house, shower and grab fresh clothes. The other stayed. Mom didn’t bring up what we’d talked about with the cops.
During one of Mom’s trips home, Lori told me that the accident happened just three miles from Keith’s parents’ house. We hadn’t even made it to the highway, which was a twisted blessing. The curvy road leading to the farm was rarely traveled by anyone beyond those who were going to Keith’s house. If we’d gotten on the highway, we could’ve hit someone else.
Killed more people.
Killed people other than ourselves.
In those hours, when Lori or my mom was quiet, or when the nurses were checking my vitals, thoughts of Megan and the guys consumed me even though I tried to shut it all down. I wanted to ask questions. How was Abbi doing? Had someone called Dary or had she come home Sunday to this? What did Sebastian think? How was Coach... How was Coach handling the loss of Megan? I was replaceable on the team. Megan wasn’t. School had started the day I woke up. How was everyone else doing?
In the ICU, they allowed only family to visit. That would change once I was moved into recovery. From what I heard, INOVA had an open visiting policy. People could come at any time, even overnight. But for now, I was grateful it was only Lori and Mom.
Seeing my friends would make me think about what had happened, beyond the surface level. And I couldn’t. Doing so would make it all too real, too painful, and while I was in the hospital, away from that life, I tried to pretend I was in here for anything other than the reason I was.
“Mr. Miller has been amazing with Mom,” Lori said late Wednesday evening while Mom was in the cafeteria, wherever that was located. Mr. Miller was Mom’s boss, the insurance-agency owner. “He gave her this week and next off without making her use her vacation. He rolled over all her unused sick time.”
“That’s nice,” I murmured, staring out the small square window. I couldn’t really see anything other than the sky.
Lori sat on the other side of the bed, her arms propped on the mattress, by my legs, which were currently encased in some kind of bizarre pressure cuffs. Something to do with circulation and preventing blood clots.
“Sebastian texted me,” she announced.
I closed my eyes.
“He’s been asking about you. Every day.” She laughed hoarsely. “You know, when I went home on Monday for the first time, I swear he must’ve been waiting by the window for Mom or me. He came barreling out the door before I even got out of my car. He’s been really worried. So have Abbi and Dary.”
My chest squeezed. I didn’t want to think about them. I didn’t want to think about Sebastian or Abbi and Dary worrying about me when Megan was gone. When his friends, his close friends, were also gone. I didn’t want to think.
Lori exhaled raggedly, and a moment of silence passed. “Megan and Chris’s funeral is tomorrow. Their family has decided to hold them both at the same time.”
I stopped breathing.
Her funeral was tomorrow? It seemed so quick. Like it was over already, before it even began. And her family wasn’t just...wasn’t just burying her; they were also burying Chris. I couldn’t even... I just couldn’t.
“Phillip’s funeral is on Friday and Cody’s is on Sunday. His is taking longer because...” She trailed off.
I opened my eyes. The sky was a deeper shade of blue. It was almost night. “Why?” I croaked out.
Lori sighed again. “They had to do an...an autopsy on him, since he was driving. They didn’t perform one on the rest. It wasn’t necessary beyond taking blood samples.”<
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