Authors: Lisa Luedeke
“I’m okay,” he slurs. “R’you okay?” He turns his head slowly toward me, resting his bloody cheek on the seat back. “Don’ worry ’bout me.”
“I’m going to find someone.”
His eyes are shut. “Okay. I’m okay,” he mumbles.
The ground outside the car is uneven; I stumble, lose my balance, spin toward the earth. The world melts and blurs, the ground rushing to meet me. I lie in the wet leaves. Time slips away.
Somehow I get up, gripping the wrecked car until the world stands still. Each arm, each leg conspires to pull me back to the ground. My tongue, thick and dry, sticks to the roof of my mouth. A can of beer lies on the floor, driver’s side. I open it and take several long, deep pulls.
Slowly I begin, counting my steps, watching my feet: one, two, three . . .
* * *
The empty beer can slips from my hand. My mouth and throat are desert dry, cracked like parched earth. I see visions: fountains; rivers; lakes; glasses of lemonade, pink, with ice.
Mosquitoes emerge from the thick wet forest and land on my head, legs, arms—any bit of flesh. Tiny black flies swarm around the blood on my shoulder. Little bites of pain, a frantic urge to scratch, but moving—reaching, twisting, slapping—is too hard. The pain is too sharp in my chest. The insects devour me.
I walk forever.
* * *
The sun is higher in the sky now, edging above the trees. On a stretch of Route 117, just outside town, the dirt road meets the pavement. I stumble toward an abandoned Sunoco station. An ancient public telephone booth stands near the locked-up
restrooms. The glass is dirty and scratched, the folding door broken. I try to remember Matt’s telephone number, which I’ve known by heart since I was twelve—then everything goes black.
Ron Bailey finds me on the ground covered with cuts, bug bites, and blood and reeking of beer and vomit.
* * *
I try hard to drink the Coke Ron has put in my hand and not throw up as we drive fast down the bumpy dirt road toward Alec.
“Jesus,” Ron says under his breath when he sees the car. “Jesus
H.
Christ.”
When we arrive, Alec is conscious. He has slid into the driver’s seat of his wrecked car, toward the door I’d left open—the only door not pinned shut by trees, the only way out.
“Jesus Christ, boy! What in hell were you thinking?” Ron says. “Can you move?”
Alec nods and pushes himself out of the car. Ron holds Alec steady and helps him into the truck. “We need to get you to a hospital. Buckle up, boy.”
Alec is shoulder to shoulder with me in the cab, his head resting on the back window. There is a long gash on his face, caked in blood. He looks stunned, exhausted, vulnerable. It is like looking at a stranger. It terrifies me.
Ron is captain of the Westland Volunteer Fire Department; he flips on the flashing red light on his dashboard, steps heavy on the gas, and we hurtle toward the hospital.
“Your mother know where you are? She even know you were out with this character?” he says.
“Working,” I mumble. My throat hurts. I gulp the Coke, then offer it to Alec, but he doesn’t even see me. I close my eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Katie,” Ron’s voice says. “You could’ve been killed.”
That’s the only thing I hear as we speed to the hospital.
* * *
Dr. Trumbull knows my mother from when she worked at this hospital. He is talking, his face stern: You have a concussion. You’re dehydrated. The pain in your chest is a bruised lung. He gives me six tight stitches in my shoulder. He gives me a speech about drinking, a speech about riding with someone who has been drinking, a speech about drinking so much it can poison you. He has never looked at me like this before—horror, revulsion, fear. He finishes and sends me away.
* * *
I wake on a couch in the waiting room, stumble toward the bathroom, vomit.
In the hallway, voices rise. Dr. Trumbull is reaming out Ron for not calling an ambulance.
“I got ’em here in fifteen minutes,” Ron says. “Would’ve taken an ambulance longer than that just to find ’em.”
“Alec could have had a back or neck injury,” Dr. Trumbull says.
Their argument fades away.
* * *
I am alone now, except for Ron. Alec needs stitches and his parents are in Bermuda. I don’t know what they need me to
know: a cell phone number, a hotel name—something. They are bringing in a special surgeon to put his cheek back together. They need permission to treat. Why won’t Ron stop talking? I want to curl up in a ball in the corner. I want to sleep.
Ron is calling Portland again, talking to my mother. He is handing me juice, telling me to drink. He is bringing me soda from the vending machine. He folds up his cell phone, sits down next to me, waits. I pretend to drink what he hands me. I have nothing to say.
“You mind telling me what happened?” he says. He doesn’t say it mean. “There were bottles from here to kingdom come in that kid’s car, and they weren’t for Coca-Cola.”
I stare straight ahead, stare at nothing. He tries again.
“What were you thinking, gettin’ in a car with a drunk kid like that? Couldn’t you find someone else to drive you home?”
His question hits like a fist in the stomach. I press my back into the vinyl couch, willing myself not to cry.
“It wasn’t like that, Ron,” I whisper.
“You tryin’ to tell me you two weren’t drinking? I wasn’t born yesterday, Katie,” he says softly and catches my eye, shaking his head. Even then his face looks kind. “I’ve known you since you was born and this is the first time I’ve ever seen you smellin’ like the inside of a barroom after hours. You have any idea how many laws you broke just
being
in that car with all them bottles? You got any idea the trouble you’re in?”
Trouble.
I can hear Ron talking still, saying words I don’t want to hear:
possession, transporting alcohol, minors, open containers . . .
Thoughts dart through my mind, hit walls, and recede. There is no way out of this, no way to take it back. The realization drops on me like a bomb. Everything I might lose tears through my mind—field hockey, Coach Riley, a scholarship, Matt. Even Ron, with his kind eyes and offers to help, will disappear when he learns the truth: Alec was not driving that car.
I
was.
Ron is looking at me, waiting.
“I know I’m in trouble.” My voice is barely audible. Tears flood my eyes, run down my cheeks. I hide my face, burying it in my knees. How can I tell him?
Ron looks around the waiting room, brow furrowed. His thoughts are somewhere else.
“You tell your mother when she gets here that I’ll be right back. Don’t you move.” He points at me. “You drink that soda. And don’t talk to anybody, you understand me?”
He pushes open the lobby door with one hand and is gone.
* * *
My mother arrives. After Dr. Trumbull assures her that I am okay, she starts grilling me about “how Alec drove the car off the road.”
I curl up in a ball, my head in my knees, and refuse to talk to her.
They can find out the truth when they talk to Alec. I just want a few more minutes before the rug is jerked out from under me and my life as I know it is gone.
* * *
Ron is back forty minutes later with Harlan Reed in tow. Harlan is the constable in Westland, the law, the only thing resembling
a police officer in our tiny village. If there is a complaint, an unexplained noise, a missing animal, a domestic quarrel, he takes care of it. Now he is here to take care of me.
They are talking, heads down, voices low. They find my mother, then disappear.
I have dozed off on the couch in the waiting room when I wake to familiar voices. I stay perfectly still, opening my eyes a slit.
“If the state police get called in she’ll end up in court, and God knows what will happen to her.” Ron’s voice is rising. He looks in my direction and checks himself.
I listen carefully, don’t move.
“I’d say she and the young man are in serious trouble, regardless,” Dr. Trumbull says. “Do you realize they were both still legally drunk when they arrived here this morning? And this was a good five or six hours
after
the accident. I think a visit to court might do your daughter some good.” He is looking at my mother.
“You listen to me, Fred,” my mother says fiercely. “I worked here with you for fifteen years and you’ve known Katie since I carried her. She’s a good kid. Never been in any kind of trouble. The state police come in and she can forget that hockey scholarship, and unless you want to pay her way through four years of college or have a better idea, I’m asking for you to be reasonable.”
Ron interrupts. “Fact is, this happened out in Westland and that’s Harlan’s jurisdiction. You can consider the police notified, Doc. You do your job and let Harlan do his.”
“I’ll take care of it from here, Doctor,” Harlan says.
“I’m not talking about
police
.” Dr. Trumbull’s voice is raised now. “I’m talking about getting that child some
help
.”
Outnumbered, the doctor wheels around and faces my mother again. “Sandra, I’ll go along with your wishes,” he says in a voice so low I can barely hear. “But don’t kid yourself. Your daughter’s in trouble, and I don’t mean with the law. First time or not, Katie needs some help. And you know damn well it’s my responsibility to make sure she gets it. Remember fifteen years of friendship when you think about that.” He turns and strides down the corridor.
My mother stares at the tile on the floor for a minute. When she finally lifts her head, her face is defiant but her eyes fill with tears.
“My daughter’s not in trouble, damn it,” she says to Ron, who guides her back to a couch, one hand on the small of her back. “She’s just a kid.” She rubs away the tears angrily.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sandra,” Ron says softly. “Katie’s going to be okay.”
* * *
Finally, Alec is released. A friend of Alec’s parents waits to take him home. His left cheek is covered by puffy gauze, the dressing bordered by a shiny, deep purple bruise. At the top, the filmy tape securing the bandage covers the soft hollow beneath his eye. A vision from the car—Alec’s cheek mangled and bloody—flits through my mind and is gone. He doesn’t look at me as he walks by and I’m too terrified to speak.
Crazy as it is, I am afraid of what he might do to me.
* * *
At home, I hide in my room. Lying on my bed, I pull the blankets up tight around my neck and try to stop shivering. I will my brain to shut off, to forget what I know: nothing will ever be the same again. Today was bad; tomorrow will be worse. The truth will be all over Westland—all over Deerfield—in an instant, as soon as Alec is well enough to pick up a phone or walk out the door of his house.
My eyes land on a spot on the wall next to my bed. For years, there had been a picture of my father and me hanging there. The paint is still slightly darker in that spot, a small square shadow on the lavender wall. After my father left, I’d put the picture in a little frame myself, staring at it every night before I fell asleep.
Then, sometime freshman year, after a bad day at school or at practice or something, I’d taken a swing at it. Just swiped at it with one arm and watched it fly across the room where it landed, its frame broken. It had lain there for days before I’d stuffed it into my desk. Out of sight, out of mind.
On November third it will be five years since my father left. I’d circled the day in red Magic Marker on my calendar that year, back in seventh grade. As each day passed, I’d crossed it off with a big
X
, watching the red circle around the three get farther and farther away. Each day I thought,
this has to be the day he comes back. He can’t stay away any longer.
Each day, I was wrong.
I jump up suddenly. Pain shoots through my chest. Across the room, I whip open the top left drawer of my desk and dig around, throwing stuff on the floor. There it is, finally, under
some postcards from Cassie and an English paper with an A at the top. The frame is gone and the edges of the photo curl up slightly.
I stare at the picture of us together. We are on the lawn in front of our house and it is summertime. My father is kneeling on the ground next to me, smiling, his eyes focused on the camera. He looks younger than I remember him. Would I even know him if I saw him now? Would he know
me
?
I wonder what he would do if he knew about the accident. Would he even care? Care that I could have
died
?
I want him to know about it. Not the part about the drinking, or Alec’s stitches, or the trouble I’m in, but the part about how close I came to death. I want him to know that I might not be around forever just
waiting
for him.
I might disappear, too.
The first night lasts forever. I’m in and out of sleep, in and out of dreams. Awake, my heart hammers in my chest, cutting short my breath. Panic mounts until I fear my lungs will burst. But asleep, it is no better. I’m hurtling through the forest. Branches scratch the windshield and it shatters. Blood splatters my face and hands. Alec lies dead beside me. I wake with a start and the cycle begins again.
Now, before dawn, I stare into space. Sheets lay twisted around my legs, blankets bunched up on the floor. My face is wet, as if I’ve been crying, damp hair plastered to my forehead. My body aches and the slightest movement brings a rush of pain. Bruises—deep purple, lavender, yellow—have appeared on my arms and legs like grotesque tattoos. Bug bites, red and raw from scratching, cover me like a rash.
Outside, a thin band of light appears on the horizon. I reach for the glass of water on my nightstand, but my trembling hand knocks it to the floor. Shards of glass now lie there in tiny pools. The day has barely begun.
How will I survive it?
My stomach heaves and I run to the bathroom. I’ve eaten nothing and nothing comes up. Sprawled on the bathroom floor, I wish, for a fleeting moment, that I had died in that car.