“I don’t… Syd, we need to
hurry—”
“I mean, she tried to
kill
us, Evan. This is serious.”
“Let’s get her to urgent care,”
he said. “And then we'll talk about it.”
I bit down on my tongue, and
loudly sighed. “Okay. But as soon as we get there.”
I put on my seat belt, backed
down the driveway, and headed toward LMU. I turned on the windshield wipers, started
driving slowly, but when I passed by the destroyed fence, and saw a scary
middle-aged man jumping up and down on his porch screaming into a cell phone, I
sped up.
I didn't stop until the next
intersection. I knew the neighborhood we were in, but Michelle had taken one
too many turns.
“Evan...
shit
. Do you remember which way to go?”
“Uhh, left, I think.”
I looked both ways. Pulled
onto another street.
“Syd?” Evan said.
“What? What’s wrong?” I
glanced in the rearview mirror. Michelle was shaking.
“You have to hurry, I don't
know what's wrong with her.” He pulled her closer to his chest and blotted at
her forehead with his jacket collar. “Don’t stop in the parking lot, just pull
up to the front. I’ll bring her in.”
“Okay.”
“Can you go any faster?”
I leaned my head closer to
the steering wheel, narrowed my eyes. The rain was still pounding the
windshield, and I struggled seeing very far in front of me.
But I nodded, and said, “Uhh,
yeah. Sure.”
I jammed my foot against the
pedal, started going 30 MPH, then 35. When I saw Loyola Blvd, and the
university up on the right, I sped up even more.
“Yes!” I shouted. “There it
is! I see it!”
“Oh, thank God,” Evan said.
“Hurry.”
I made a right turn, and came
up to a car that was going painfully slow. I pulled a Michelle, and swerved
around it. The girl had almost killed me, and now I was risking my life to save
her. The irony.
40 MPH. 45 MPH.
The LMU gate was up ahead. No
cars blocked the entrance. I was almost there.
I looked in the rearview
mirror again. Michelle’s head was still pressed against Evan’s shoulder, but
now he had his arms wrapped around her. Her eyes were closed, and the
expression on her face was not one of pain, but of longing. I saw her lips
brush against his shoulder—and Evan didn’t push her away.
I narrowed my eyes, tried to
remember the innocence I was looking at.
But my thoughts roamed to the
inevitable anyway. In the back wasn't my boyfriend and some injured girl I
barely knew; it wasn't the guy I loved trying to care for someone who meant
nothing to him.
It was Evan and Melanie, the loving
couple, the perfect pair who would never be torn apart—not even in death.
Evan's eyes shot open, and he
pointed past me. “Sydney! Oh my God,
look
out
!”
“What?”
I looked away from the
rearview mirror—and saw the headlights.
My head struck an exploding
air bag. The seat belt jerked me back as the car spun out and came to a quick
stop in the middle of the road.
I blinked. Licked my lips. I heard
a loud ringing in my ears, and my whole body started trembling. What the hell happened?
I blinked again. All I saw was white.
“Evan?” I whispered, then
coughed, twice. “Evan, can you hear me?” I swatted the air bag away, and
reached for the door handle. When I pulled the door open, I tried to find my
balance, but I just fell, right out onto the pavement. I pushed against the wet
ground with my hands. But then I stopped, glanced down, at all the little
shards of glass sticking out of my palms.
“Oh shit…”
I looked back up at the car.
Listened for voices, watched for movement. There was no sign of Evan or
Michelle.
“No. No, come on.”
I looked down the street, at
a car pulled to the curb. A woman was standing beside it, on the sidewalk,
pulling her hair as she talked into a cell phone. Was she calling for help?
Indeed, she was. Five seconds
passed, and I heard it, the sirens in the distance. I tried to sit up, but
couldn’t. I rested my head against the pavement. And looked to my left.
The car I struck head on was
barely twenty yards away. The front of the vehicle was crushed. The fender rested
against the curb, and the hood shot straight up toward the sky. Someone kicked
the driver’s side door open—and a young man toppled to the ground.
He had short brown hair. A white
collared shirt. Brown Corduroy pants.
The lenses in his glasses
were shattered.
I crawled forward. “No.” I
blinked a few times. It was all in my head, right? This was just a sick
nightmare...
right
?
He slumped over on his side.
The blood on his face and neck mixed in with the rain.
“Lukas?” I said.
He took a deep breath. “
Sydney
?”
“Hold on. I’m coming.”
I pushed myself toward him.
Every inch of me ached, but the pain didn’t slow me. I crawled across the
street, toward my roommate, toward my best friend. He reached for my
fingertips, and I stretched out my arm to touch his. I was so close, so very
close.
The ambulance pulled up, and
the paramedics crowded around me. When they blocked me from Lukas, I started weeping
uncontrollably.
They sat me up, shined a
light in my eyes. The rain continued to pound against my face, like it never
wanted to stop, not for the rest of my life.
I glanced at Lukas, at his
smashed-up car. Then I turned to my Sportage, and gazed toward the back seat. I
saw Evan and Michelle, both slumped against the side window.
They weren't moving.
“Ma'am,” one of the
paramedics said. “Ma'am, are you all right? Can you hear me? Say something if
you can hear me.”
I didn't say a word. I just took
one deep breath.
And started screaming.
Chapter 36
The images flashed in and out
of my mind. I blinked, and Lukas sat up. I blinked, and Evan pounded his hand
against the window. I blinked, and the paramedics put me on a stretcher,
wheeled me inside the ambulance, and slammed the door.
“Where’s Lukas? Where's Evan?”
I remember asking, over and over. “Are they okay?”
“Shh,” one of the paramedics
told me. “Just relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Those are the words I faded
away to.
Everything will be fine. You
have nothing to worry about.
Everything's
going to be—
I woke up in a hospital bed,
in a small white room that looked the size of my sophomore dorm. The TV in the
upper corner was turned off, and the shades at the window were drawn.
I stared at the ceiling for a
few seconds, then closed my eyes. I saw Evan on top of me, Lukas's face as he
fell onto the pavement.
Evan.
Lukas.
Where were they?
I sat up in the bed. My back stung
with a sharp, vicious pain. I looked down at my aching palms, at the light
bandages that covered where all the shards of glass had cut me. I pulled the
bed sheets up to my hot, sweaty face, and looked around the room. Empty.
“Is someone there?” I
whispered.
A tear trickled down my cheek.
I didn’t even know I was on the verge of crying; I just blinked, and there it
was. I wiped it away.
“Lukas? Evan?” I looked for
my phone, but didn't see it. Where were my belongings? The room was stripped of
everything. “Can someone help me?” I yelled, a little louder.
Was I dead? Nobody was coming
for me. I needed to move. I needed to get out of the room.
I swung my legs to the left,
and scooted toward the edge of the bed. I almost dropped down to the floor,
when the door opened up—and Evan walked in.
“Syd?” He had a few scrapes
on his left cheek, and his right eye was bloodshot, but he looked otherwise unharmed.
I had imagined the worst, but he looked like he’d been in a minor skateboarding
accident, nothing more.
“Evan!” I put my arms out,
and he crashed right into me, wrapped his arms around my back.
“I'm so glad you're okay,” he
said.
“You're glad
I'm
okay? What about you? I didn’t know
if you were alive or dead—”
“Shh. It’s fine. I'm here.”
He kissed me on my forehead, then brought his hands to my cheeks.
“I hit Lukas,” I said, shaking
my head. “He fell out of the car. It was him, wasn’t it?”
Evan nodded. His eyes were
droopy, and his demeanor wasn’t hopeful. I grabbed his shoulders, hard.
“Tell me he’s okay,” I said.
“He’s…” Evan bit down on his
bottom lip.
“What? What's wrong?”
“Syd, it's just—”
“Goddammit, Evan! Why are you
hesitating?”
“He… he lost a lot of blood.
He has a mild concussion, and the doctors said they’re going to need him to
stay for observation for a couple days...” He pursed his lips. Had trouble
maintaining eye contact with me. “But... yes. He's going to be fine.”
The tears came so fast I
could barely breathe. “Oh, thank God. Thank
God
.” I pushed my palms against my face; the soft bandages rested softly
against my eyelids. I took a few deep breaths, then slapped him on the
shoulder. “You asshole, you scared the hell out of me! I don’t know what I
would have done if…”
“Shh. I know, I know. I'm sorry.”
Evan didn’t so much comfort me in his arms, like a boyfriend; instead, he
rubbed his hand against my back, with a noticeably impersonal touch. “What
happened, Syd?”
He stepped back, and I said,
“What do you mean?”
“I was helping Michelle in
the back, and wasn't paying attention. You drifted to the other side of the
road. What distracted you? Was it the rain?”
I grinded my teeth for a
second. “Yeah, I guess. It's all... it's such a blur. I don't really know what
happened.” I rubbed my fingers against my temples, looked down at the white
metallic ground. I knew
exactly
what
happened, what distracted me, what put everyone I love in danger.
But I didn't know how to tell
him.
“I called your mom and dad,”
Evan said. “They’re flying down tonight.”
“Oh, you did?”
“Yeah. I could only reach one
of your sisters, though. Annabelle didn’t pick up, but your mom said she’d get
a hold of her.”
“Thank you, Evan. You didn’t
have to do all that.”
“It was no problem,” he said.
I rubbed my neck. It ached as
much as the rest of my body. “Is Michelle all right? I figured you would have
told me if something—”
“She's fine. A little shaken,
but... she'll pull through. She’s downstairs with her mom.”
I gazed into his eyes,
surprised and elated at what he was saying. “So she’s okay, too?”
“She’s okay. You were going
fast, but the other car was going slow enough so that we weren’t affected too
much. They said you were the one who got the most injured because of that
stupid air bag.”
I leaned my head back, breathed
a sigh of relief. “Jesus Christ, I was so scared. You know... that one of you
might have
died
, or something. When
can I see Lukas? Can I see him now?”
Evan brought his hands down
to his hips. His lips quivered a little. When he looked away from me, I scooted
closer to the edge of the bed, and grabbed hold of his blood-soaked jacket.
“What?” I asked.
He didn't respond.
“Evan, what’s the matter?”
“Umm...” A tear welled up in
his bloodshot eye. “Sydney, Robert didn’t make it.”
I stared at him, for what
seemed like forever. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
The pain started in my gut;
it felt like Evan stuck a sharp knife through my navel and started twisting it
to the left and right. The pain traveled up my back, to my shoulders, to my neck,
like a deadly parasite eating its way toward my brain.
For a second I forgot how to
breathe. “What did you say?”
“He didn't have his seat belt
on. Lukas said he took it off for a second, to reach for something in the back
seat. His head hit the windshield. They couldn’t stop the bleeding…”
“No,” I said, and scooted
back. “No, no, no. You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Trust me, I wish I
was—”
“You’re
lying
!” He tried to comfort me, but I pushed against his shoulder.
“Get away from me! Get away!”