After the Woods (28 page)

“Julia!” Kellan says.

Charlie the paramedic shoots him a dirty look. “She's supposed to say it. Julia, do you know what day it is?”

“It's late,” I whimper. “I have to go.”

“Julia, do you know who our president is?”

“You're not hearing me. I have to go!” I beg.

“Do you have any pain or weakness, Julia?” Without waiting for the answer, he opens my jacket and reaches underneath my sweater, palpating.

“Julia, does this hurt?”

I should look toward Kellan, wonder what he is thinking, with this hot guy's hand up my shirt. But instead I flash on Liv, old Liv, imagining her wisecracks, imagining what she would say about the Model Medic pushing on my chest and stomach.

“Does this hurt?”

Old Liv is standing behind him, mouthing
Oh my God
, trying to make me laugh.
Only you, Julia,
she would say.
Only you would get action from an EMT who looks like he stepped out of a telenovela. How funny would it be if you started moaning right now? Imagine the look on his face!

“How about this, does this hurt?” he asks.

Liv. What are you doing to yourself? When was the last time we laughed at something together, hard? What's going to happen to you? What will it take for Deborah to leave you alone?

“Does this hurt?” he repeats.

I let out a howl.

The medic's perfect features draw together, deadly serious. Kellan tears his hands through his wet hair. Two other medics loom close, blinking rain from their eyes.

“Get her on the spine board,” Charlie says over his shoulder.

“I don't need to be immobilized, I have a hurt wrist!” I've been here before, and being strapped to a backboard means they're not letting me go any time soon.

“We're going to move you onto a backboard and splint your neck, as a precaution. You have to start answering my questions, Julia. When did you last eat?”

“No backboard!” I writhe, and they are on me like ants, and Charlie has his hands on both sides of my head, and he is counting, one, two, three, and I am rolled to my hip before being lifted onto a backboard the length of my body. Straps tighten across my hips, legs, forehead, and chin. They slide my arms under the strap across my pelvis. I whimper as my wrist moves, tiny bones shifting and shaking in jelly.

“Are you on any medications?” Charlie asks, hovering in my field of vision now, asking questions while the other two float in and out like disembodied heads, reciting in sharp notes vague things about my color and breathing. The squeeze of a blood pressure cuff on one side, my wrist moved flush against my immobilized body on the other.

“Have you used any illegal drugs in the past thirty days?” Charlie asks, relentless.

I blink against the rain. “Kellan, tell them I'm all right!”

Kellan's face pops into my reduced square of vision. Fat drops drip from the ends of his curls. “You need to follow orders. You need to stay still,” he tells me.

Someone murmurs something about possible traumatic brain injury, which makes me even more pissed, because I don't have an injured brain, I have an injured wrist, and a friend who needs me now. I wriggle pointlessly against the restraints. “I have to go! You don't understand!”

“Please stay calm, Julia.”

A tiny prick on my arm, a cool rush through my vein. In seconds, I don't want to fight anymore. I love Kellan; he's so worried about me. Listen, he's giving someone my address, he's such a good guy, so responsible. There, now Kellan is speaking in formal tones on his phone, she's okay, Dr. Spunk, it was a super-minor accident, the air bags deployed but she's one hundred percent fine. That car has so many safety features, it protected her like a steel cage. Good.

Kellan shoves the phone into his back pocket and runs beside as they carry me Cleopatra-style on my board. I am loaded into an ambulance for a second time in my life. The dangling equipment is familiar, a sure enough trigger, and yet I won't go anywhere, because all of my memories are on the surface now, where they belong.

Kellan holds my hand. I try to face him, then remember I can't. He realizes I can't see him and gushes apologies.

“I need to see Liv before she gives Shane his present,” I whine. It sounds so silly now, listening to myself under the lovely narcotic haze of whatever just entered my bloodstream.

He laughs. “You are most definitely not going anywhere.” He's beautiful when he laughs.

“You've been avoiding me,” I say.

He laughs again. “I haven't been avoiding you. I've been at a hockey tournament in Lake Placid. My father and me. We thought it might be a good time to get out of town.”

I smile. “Placid. Placid is a nice word. Placid sounds … placid. Hey. At the coffee place. You were with the Apple Face girl.”

“With the
who
?”

“The blonde.”

“Kerrie? I wasn't with Kerrie, she just happened to be there. I was saying hello!”

“Of course her name is Kerrie. A Kerrie would like fresh milk. Milk and apples.”

“Do you seriously think I'd start seeing another girl because of Paula Papademetriou's stupid interview? We covered this, Julia.”

“Papademetriou. Papa-dem-meaty-o's. Like bad canned pasta. With minimeatballs.”

“Julia.”

“Listen, I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date.” I lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “If you unstrap me now, you can come with me.”

“You really don't get it, do you? You're going to the hospital. Even if you're mostly fine, that wrist isn't fine. You won't be doing much writing with that hand for a while. You're not ambidextrous, are you?”

“Am-bi-dex-trous. Sounds like dom-in-a-trix. A deviant who's skilled at using both hands.” I giggle.

“Oh boy.” Kellan casts a look at the medic riding in the back with us, whom I can feel but not see monitoring my vitals.

“It's the Haldol talking,” the medic murmurs, unamused.

“My boyfriend likes a girl with an apple face,” I tell her.

“I do not like a girl with an apple face,” Kellan says.

“I have to save my friend. My friend's name is Liv.” It suddenly seems important to get the girl medic on my side. Because even if she's not a GIRL—especially if she's not a GIRL—she will understand that you have to save your best friend's life. It's just what you do.

The strap across my pelvis tightens.

Kellan leans close. “You can see Liv when you get out of the hospital. And you will: if there's one thing you can't do, it's stop saving Liv.” He strokes my forehead with his fingertips, and it feels lovely. “When you're done, I'll be here,” he whispers. I breathe heavily, and my breathing feels luscious, slow and measured. I have the sense I'm forgetting something, but it's okay, because Kellan doesn't like apples, and Liv thinks Charlie the paramedic is way cute, and I won't be doing much writing for a while.

 

SEVENTEEN

371 Days After the Woods

Paula took days to confirm Liv's surgical appointment with Dr. Juan Cassio in Bolivia. She was, after all, torn between two major stories now, and she had me to thank for both. The rising number of parents sending their teens to foreign countries for plastic surgery constituted a bona fide trend. And balancing the sensitivities of my personal revelation—girl saw body in pit, remembered later—required a deft hand, and could not be hurried.

Stuck in my hospital bed, with Liv screening my calls and her “surgical holiday” only a day away, I had to spin Alice into action, even if it was Thanksgiving. Alice's official mission was to inform Liv of my car accident, although I doubted Deborah would relay the message. I hoped if Alice made my wreck sound bad enough, Liv might stick around, or at least stop by the hospital on her way to Logan Airport.

Alice thought it odd to find Deborah, rather than packing or fixing Thanksgiving dinner, on the front lawn talking shades of yellow with the owners of Park Pro Painting.

“These people,” Deborah had stage-whispered behind her hand to Alice, “don't mind working on holidays.”

The next morning, in the wee hours, Alice drove by the Lapins' house again as instructed, and was surprised to see Deborah's car in the driveway and the houselights blazing well past their six a.m. scheduled flight departure. It seemed Deborah and Liv hadn't left for their trip after all. Alice's news of my hospitalization had worked, I declared, stripping off my johnny, ready to be discharged. Alice's conclusion was more mercenary. Deborah had decided that the money for the trip would be better used to finally paint the house, Alice presumed. Either scenario sounded good to me; all that mattered was that Liv's trip wasn't happening. And choosing the perfect historical yellow could be all-consuming.

Call it foolish optimism: I even bet Alice that Deborah would leave Liv alone.

Liv wasn't making any bets. She chose Thanksgiving night to give Shane his early Christmas present. The rest is history.

“He's lucky,” Paula said gravely on the phone. “Assault with a deadly weapon can carry a sentence of up to ten years. He was a minor. It happened the day before he turned eighteen. It's an injustice: he just gets charged with a misdemeanor, has a strike on his record, and only has to go to juvie for six months. The system must be reformed.”

“It's a clean slash right over the cheekbone, long but not deep, so it wasn't much more painful than a paper cut,” Erik said. His friend was the plastic surgeon who had been consulted, and sharing information with me was okay, because processing is healthy. “Still, it's impossible to repair without stitches. There wasn't much anyone could do, no matter how skilled. Eventually it will scar. It won't be pretty.”

Mom said, “Along the way, someone failed her. Someone allowed her to mix with the wrong crowd.”

Ricker said, “It is unfortunate to the extent that it hinders your progress.” Okay, she didn't say that. But she was thinking it.

Only Alice said, “Go to her. Immediately.”

Now I charge past the metal trash can on the curb and up the walk, fly up the stairs, and hammer on Liv's front door. Stacked on the welcome mat are two foil-covered turkey dinners, a fruit-stuffed cornucopia with a tag that says
Saint Theresa's Parish
, and a cellophane cone of autumn-hued carnations. I lift the flowers and peer at the tag:
Wishing you a speedy recovery. Fondly, Ryan Lombardi
. Water saturates everything, tiny beads across the foil and the cellophane. It's classic Deborah, leaving this gaudy, soggy display to show the world that so many people care about the Lapins.

I bang harder. The handle is altogether missing now, but no matter, because the door eases open. Liv wears a ladylike kelly-green peacoat, tights, and gloves, like an old-fashioned traveler ready to board a steam train. Her hair is drawn back into a neat bun. A rectangular plastic bandage stretches across her cheek from under her left eye, nose to ear. “Come in,” she says, like it's a regular day, her voice and movements light. I step in, wiping tears of panic away with the heel of my palm. On the round table in the middle of the foyer is a hand-drawn card for LIVVY propped against a bouquet of supermarket flowers: pink carnations losing petals and browned baby's breath. Three pearlized suitcases of different sizes are lined up next to the door.

“It's the holiday season. A time for gratitude,” Liv says.

“Oh, Liv.” I start to bawl.

Liv throws up her palm. “Stop! You're not allowed to sob. Turn right around and leave if you're going to do that.”

I swipe at hot tears with my fingertips. “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

“You must have heard by now. I tried to break up with Shane, and he got mad and just started slashing all over the place. Everyone knows he carries a knife.”

A gift that goes beyond the recipient, tied with a fat bow. Liv and I both bound our presents with ribbons. Shane got his, but I chickened out and left Liv's stocking alone. If I had let Liv know that I was onto her madness, that I knew, maybe somehow her face would be whole.

Liv snaps her fingers in front of my nose. “Are you saying you didn't hear the story?”

“I just heard. I was in a car accident, in the hospital.” I hold up my splinted wrist. “I was discharged an hour ago. I snuck out of my house when my mother went to get the ginger ale I begged for. It doesn't matter, never mind. I called you. I've been calling you,” I stammer.

She moves to the burnished-gold antique mirror and turns her cheek to it. “The story got around fast. A matter of hours, really.” She touches the edge of her bandage. “I guess the holiday break didn't slow the rumor mill.”

“Shane is a criminal. He deserves everything he gets.” I search her eyes in the mirror for agreement. There is nothing. I had expected nothing; anything would have surprised me.

Which means it's Go Time.

“I hear he's going to jail for a long time,” I say. “Twenty years, maybe.”

“Nooo,” Liv says, drawing out the word as she tightens the belt on her jacket. “He's going to juvie for six months.”

“That's not long enough. Shane is pure evil. Calculating.”

“It's over.” She moves away from the mirror and drops to her knees at the biggest suitcase, popping the buckles and setting the cover against the wall. She unclicks the crisscrossed straps and removes two sweaters. From a nearby bag labeled Blick Art Materials she slips a set of colored pencils in a wooden box sealed in plastic, along with a tablet of creamy, expensive-looking paper. She places them in the spot where the sweaters were and runs her fingers over them, smiling.

“Thank God it's over.” I swallow hard and plow through. “In some ways, I feel like this was all part of Shane's master plan, you know? Get his dream girl, then mark her in some ghastly, irreversible way that will make her forever his.”