The Half Life of Molly Pierce (2 page)

His eyes are open. He’s gasping for breath. His eyes are green, his hair is black, his lips are red with blood that’s choking up out of his mouth.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, I say and I pick his head off the pavement and cradle it in the crook of my elbow and there’s blood all over my sweater. My favorite sweater and there’s blood all over it.

Fuck, I say. Please don’t die. I can’t watch you die.

He catches his breath a little. I wipe the blood away from his mouth with my spare sleeve and I’m crying suddenly; I didn’t realize I was crying. This stranger is going to die and I don’t want him to die. Please don’t die. Please don’t die.

His eyes focus on my face. His eyes meet mine and run over my mouth, my neck, my ears, my hair. Back to my face, my eyes.

“Mabel,” he says.

Mabel?

“I’m not . . . Look, it’s okay, you’re not going to die.”

“Molly,” he says.

He said Molly?

He said my name?

How do you? How do you . . . How do you? How do you?

“How do you know my name?” I whisper.

“I fucked up,” he says.

“How do you know my name?”

“It’s me,” he says. “It’s Lyle.”

“I don’t . . .”

I don’t know you.

“Please don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going to leave you.”

“I fucked up again. I always fuck it up. I just. I wanted to see you again. I couldn’t . . . I had to try.”

“I don’t know who you are.”

“You can’t leave me,” he says. “You have to stay with me until I die.”

“You’re not . . . Don’t say that. You’re not going to die.”

You can’t die in front of me.

“I’m going to die,” he says, “of course I’m going to die. I feel like I’m going to die.”

“You’re . . . you’re not making any sense.”

“You were starting to . . . Molly, please. Don’t leave me.”

“How do you know my name?”

He’s choking again; fresh blood is bubbling out of his mouth and all I can see is the red of it spreading out in one big puddle on the pavement. His eyes are rolling backward in his head, and suddenly I’m aware there are people standing around us. People screaming, a woman crying. He’s going to die.

“Lyle!” I yell. I shake him. “Lyle! Wake up!”

His eyes flutter open again; I wipe the blood from his mouth.

“Don’t die, please,” I beg.

“Get in the ambulance,” he says and then I can hear it, the ambulance, the sirens. “Ride the ambulance with me. Tell them you know me. My name is Lyle Avery. My cell phone is in my pocket. Call my brother. Tell him . . . tell him where to meet us.”

“I don’t know how you know me,” I say. I choke. “I don’t know who you are.”

“I know,” he says, “but I had to try.”

The sirens are getting closer. The ring of people around us is growing, but nobody tries to help. “Please don’t die,” I whisper.

“You have to call my brother. In my phone. His name is Sayer.”

Sayer Avery.

“I don’t know who you are,” I say weakly.

“At least pretend,” he says. “I need you to pretend.”

The woman sobs louder. Lyle coughs again, and blood sprays from his lips and gets all over me.

He’s going to die. He’s going to die and there’s nothing I can do.

In the times I’d like to black out, I am forced to live. To be aware. To witness.

In the times I’d like to wake up hours away from where I am, miles away from where I am, I am here. Here watching this boy I do not know take ragged, choking breaths. His teeth stained red. His eyes all white. His cheeks draining of color.

“Lyle,” I say, and he focuses on my face again. “Lyle. You’re going to be okay.”

I love you and you’re not going to die.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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S
omeone pulls me away from him.

The EMTs are here; they’re strapping him to a stretcher. One of them asks me his name and they yell it at him, trying to get him to open his eyes. I step forward without thinking and reach into his pocket, find his phone, and pull it out. Somebody grabs me, holds my arms, looks into my face as if scared I might be hurt, too.

No, no. It’s all his blood. I’m okay, I’m fine. I’m fine.

Then they’re loading the stretcher into the ambulance and I’m stumbling forward, screaming suddenly, mad with fear that they’ll take him from me, that he’ll die without me.

“Lyle!” I scream. “Please, I have to go with him! Please!”

“You know him?” one of the EMTs says. A skinny boy with red hair. He’s too young to be an EMT—how can he save anyone’s life?

“He’s my friend, please. I have to go with him; I have to be with him. He’s my friend. He’s Lyle Avery. His name is Lyle Avery.”

He doesn’t want to let me come. I can tell by the split-second shadow that crosses his face. But he makes up his mind and he grabs my arm and he pushes me up into the back of the ambulance and he shuts the doors behind me and I make myself as small as I can as these people try to save Lyle’s life.

They put an oxygen mask over his face, but he pulls it off and he says, “Molly? Molly?”

“I’m here. Lyle, I’m here,” I say, and I move to put a hand on his jeans but there’s blood all over everything and his leg is broken and so instead I pull my hand away and put it on my lap and then . . .

And then, nothing.

We’re at the hospital. I’m standing in a hallway and I’m holding Lyle’s cell phone in my hand and the last ten, fifteen minutes, they’re gone. I don’t remember them. I’m covered in blood and people are staring at me as they walk by and I’m looking at a pair of closed double doors and I know Lyle is somewhere behind those doors, dying.

My hands are covered in blood. I scroll through the list of contacts in Lyle’s phone and I find him, Sayer, the brother. And I press the button to call and I hold the phone up to my ear and I realize my hands are shaking. And I’m still crying, somehow, and my head is pounding and I take steps backward until I hit the wall because without it I’m going to pass out. My legs are going to give way.

I don’t answer him when he says hello.

I try to, but when I open my mouth, I start crying harder, and then he says my name and I drop the phone on the floor and I slide down the wall and put my face in my hands and cry.

I want to know this boy, but he’s going to die, and I want to know where I go when I black out and I want to know why I feel so sad all the time and why I want to go to sleep and never wake up. And then someone else has picked the phone up off the floor and they tell Sayer where to go. They whisper to hurry, they tell him his friend’s really upset and he should get here as soon as he can.

And then nothing again. I wake up and I’m in a quiet, private waiting room and there’s a boy sitting across from me who could be Lyle’s twin, only he’s older and he’s not bleeding and he’s not dying and he’s not dead.

“Hey,” he says.

“When did you get here?” I say.

“Twenty minutes ago. They gave you something to calm you down. You might be a little groggy.”

It’s the perfect excuse. I don’t have to pretend to remember anything.

“You’re Sayer.”

He nods. He has the same green eyes and dark hair as his brother.

“I don’t know who you are,” I say.

“I know.”

“I don’t know how you know me.”

“I don’t know you.”

“You said my name on the phone. How did you know my name?”

“The medication,” he says. “What they gave you. Everything might be a little fuzzy.”

“But you said my name,” I say. “On the phone, when you answered, you said my name.”

“No,” he says sadly, shaking his head. “I don’t know your name. I don’t know how you know my brother.”

“I just . . . I saw the accident. He asked me to call you.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I really appreciate that.”

“I’m Molly,” I say. My head is pounding. It feels like I’ve made all of it up, that none of it happened. Of course he doesn’t know me. Of course he never said my name on the phone. How would he know my name? “Is your brother okay?”

“He’s going to die,” he answers me. His face is sad but even. He doesn’t cry.

“Did they tell you that?”

“They didn’t have to tell me,” he says.

“But there has to be some . . .”

“Of course,” he says.

And then we’re quiet. There is this enormous emptiness in between us and it is filled with my head pounding and with the dried blood on my hands and on my sweater, and it is filled with Sayer’s quiet breathing and the way he looks at his knees. And it’s like I’m pulled to him. I get up and I stumble and I almost fall, but he’s risen and he’s caught me by the elbows and there’s nothing except Sayer and this waiting room. The way he pulls me closer to him and the way he rocks me back and forth. The smell of blood and the sting of tears and the heavy fog of the medicine they gave me.

And then the door opens and the doctor comes in. The doctor’s covered in blood, too, and he stands there, shaking his head. He still has his gloves on. He realizes it and he pulls them off and he holds them in a ball in his hands. They are blue. I try not to look at them.

Sayer pulls away from me, but he holds my hand.

And the doctor says, “I’m sorry we couldn’t save him. We did everything we could but we still couldn’t save him.”

He says more. He’s talking to Sayer but I don’t hear any of it. And I feel myself slipping away again, but it’s in slow motion and I know I don’t have to go. I can stay here. I need to stay here. It’s late. I need to call my parents. I left my car in the middle of the street with the engine running, and I left my phone and my purse in the car, and I left school early, and I have no idea what’s going on. Everything normal and ordinary is slipping away from me and the dead boy knew my name. Lyle, he’s dead. He knew me, somehow, and now he’s dead.

I let go of Sayer’s hand and I sit down in a chair, and the doctor is still talking but I can’t hear what he says. It’s like my ears are clogged. It’s like no matter how hard I try to hear him, his voice is a blur. Like he’s talking to me, but I’m in a swimming pool and his words hit the water and the sound waves split up and turn warped and wobbly.

And then he’s gone. Sayer sits down across from me again, and I realize he has Lyle’s phone in his hands now and he’s twirling it around and around. So I hold my hand out without saying anything, and he gives it to me and the clock on the front of it says seven.

I dial my mother’s number and she answers, yelling and worried, and then when I ask her to pick me up at the hospital, she stops yelling and her voice gets so soft I can barely make out her half-formed questions. “Okay? Jesus, what? Hospital? What are you . . . Molly? Molly, what’s happened?”

“I’m fine, please,” I say. “Please just come and get me.”

Suddenly I can’t stay in this room with Sayer anymore. His hands are shaking, and I stand up and he reaches toward me and touches my wrist.

“Where are you going?” he says.

“I’m going home,” I say. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“I do,” I say, “I really do. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

“Can I . . .”

“No, please.”

I don’t know what he wants, but I know I can’t do it.

I’m out of the waiting room and I’m practically running down the hallway and out the door, and when the air hits me, I inhale deeply and I sit down on the curb and put my head between my knees and I feel the rush of nausea like I’ve been expecting it. But I will not throw up. Not now, here. I won’t throw up. I will wait until I am alone and clean and then I will brush my teeth and tomorrow I will get up and go to school and I will see my friends and this will be like a bad dream. Like a nightmare. Like something unfortunate that happened but is now over. And the boy on the motorcycle knew my name, sure, but stranger things have happened. Stranger things have happened to me.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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M
y mom and my dad come to get me in the minivan and they both jump out as soon as it stops and my mom is crying and my dad looks terrified—he looks white and he looks like he’s about to fall over—and I’m trying to explain to them that I’m fine, that none of this is my blood and I’m fine, I’m just hungry and I’m just tired and we should go and find my car and then go home, can we please go home? In the van my mom makes my dad drive and she sits in the back with me and hugs me close to her, and at some point I mention that this was my favorite sweater and I make her laugh a little, which is a relief. And my car, it’s fine, someone has moved it to the side of the road and left my keys underneath the seat. My mom won’t let me drive and so she follows us and it’s just my dad and me in the minivan. The minivan smells like books because on the weekends my parents take long drives to thrift stores and they buy the books they’ll resell in the bookstore. I’ve always loved the smell of this minivan. It’s mold, I know, but it’s comforting.

“You’re sure you’re okay, Molly?” my dad says.

“Not okay,” I say. “Freaked out. But I’ll live.”

“You did a very honorable thing.”

I explained it to them on the way to get my car. The short version. I saw the accident, I held the dying boy. He died.

“I’m not going to tell your mother,” he says.

“About what?”

“The school called me. You skipped most of your classes today.”

He doesn’t seem angry. The upside of watching someone die. You get away with more, at least temporarily.

“God, yeah. Stupid. I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

I couldn’t help it. I don’t remember anything.

“We count on you, Molly. To set a good example.”

“Dad, I can’t . . . can we just . . .”

“Not another word.” He puts his hand on my leg and squeezes. “I was so scared when I saw you outside the hospital. You looked . . .”

“Like I was the one who was hit by a car?”

“Yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “You didn’t know the boy, you said?”