“I’m really sorry,” I say before taking off, ducking through the players in the hall so Stevie doesn’t see me.
* * *
“Can you wait?” I plead with the Uber driver as he pulls up to Stevie’s house. My heart pounds as I glance at my phone. I have exactly twenty-five minutes to retrieve the neck strap and get back to Rutgers, which is maybe doable if there’s no traffic. Maybe. God, what am I doing? A text comes through on my phone and I glance at it.
Stevie
Where are you? You should’ve been out a while ago. Everything okay?
Me
It went great! Sorry about lunch. One of the judges wanted me to talk to another drummer and I got caught up. I’ll be there soon.
Stevie
I’ll wait for you.
Sweat breaks out on my palms as I fumble the phone.
“Can’t wait,” says my Uber driver, a middle-aged guy in a windbreaker. “Already confirmed another customer. You have to call another car.”
“Can you cancel your next customer? I’ll pay extra.”
“Afraid not,” he says, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Sorry about that.”
“Shit!” rips from my mouth in agitation. “Sorry.” I get out of the car, my heart rate spiking as he drives off stranding me in front of Stevie’s house. I run up the front steps and ring the bell, but no one answers. The house is still and my whole body deflates as I realize they’re not home. I peer at Stevie’s window and seriously consider climbing the side of her house Spider-Man style when a splash of red in the grass catches my eye. Twenty-three minutes according to my phone, as I book it through the front lawn. The neck strap is half underneath the bare branches of the willow tree by the driveway. Twenty-two minutes and there’s only one person who can help.
Me
I need your help. Can you drive me to Rutgers? I’m standing outside Stevie’s house. It’s important.
Drew
Be there in two.
Twenty minutes until Stevie’s audition, and Drew’s Jeep pulls up to the curb. I throw open the passenger side door, hop in, and click my seatbelt in place.
“Dude, you’re out of breath,” Drew says, raking his hair back. “What’s going on?”
“Start driving,” I say and Drew jams on the accelerator, the Jeep jolting forward. He’s going fifty in a thirty-five and I don’t tell him to slow down. “Stevie dropped her neck strap and I have to get it back to her before her audition. We only have twenty minutes.”
“It’s at least thirty to get to Rutgers,” Drew says.
“That’s why you need to go fast,” I say.
“If I get a ticket, you’re paying.”
“Deal,” I say, clutching the neck strap. “Just drive.”
Trees and houses blur past us as Drew weaves around our neighborhood streets, heading for the highway. Snow begins to fall from the sky, dotting the windshield. Drew turns on the wipers but doesn’t slow down. Eighteen minutes and pop bubblegum music grates through the speakers. I wipe sweat from my forehead, then rub my hands along my khakis.
“How’d your audition go?” Drew asks, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel in time to the music.
“It didn’t,” I say. “I bailed.”
“What?” Drew turns to me then focuses back on the road, as a thin dusting of snow covers the asphalt.
“I had to get this.” I hold up the neck strap.
“I don’t think I’ve done anything like that for anyone in my life.”
“Not true,” I say. “You’ve backed me up in front of Brent for years.”
“Doesn’t count,” Drew says. “I was just doing what anyone would do. Plus, now you don’t need me anymore.”
Ever since the scene at Dino’s, Brent’s been treating me like a celebrity. Scratch that, a king. He practically bows down to me in the halls and has said thank you more times than I want to hear. All the kids who used to ignore me throw me high fives and fist bumps on the way to class, like I’m a super-hero. It’s funny how one moment can change everything.
“Look at what you’re doing for me right now. It’s a perfectly good Saturday and you’re spending it shuttling me to Rutgers so I can give my girlfriend her neck strap. Pretty selfless if you ask me.”
I’ll always need Drew, always.
“Just being a friend,” Drew says and he’s the best kind of friend, the best friend I’ll ever have. “Plus, it’s easier than watching some moving truck pack all of Dad’s stuff and drive it off to his new family.”
Drew bites his lip as he turns the radio up. I put my hand on his shoulder and he’s quiet, his eyes fixed on the road. No discussion, just plain fact. Don’s gone, but part of me knows there’s still time to fix what’s broken between them. I pull my hand back and just like that, the moment’s over.
Fifteen minutes as Drew merges onto the parkway. We’re never going to make it but he hits the accelerator hard flying through lanes and passing any cars that slow us down. Green exit signs whiz by us, a few more to go before we reach Rutgers.
“Can you go any faster?” I glance at my phone as a white tractor trailer cuts in front of us.
Drew taps the blinker and sails into the right lane, the speedometer creeping up to eighty, eighty-five. Snow chunks smack at the windshield, obscuring my vision. Drew double-times the wipers. He’s almost past the truck when it suddenly begins veering into our lane. My hand flies to the door and I brace myself. Drew slams his fist on the horn, the Jeep screaming at the truck to get out of the way. And then it’s all in slow motion. Drew’s hand pounding the horn. The truck’s front wheels barreling toward us. Drew flooring it, trying to make it past the truck before we collide.
“Watch it!” I yell, grabbing the wheel and yanking it hard to the right.
“No!” Drew screams, trying to steady the Jeep, but it’s too late.
The car flies off the side of the road and we’re flipping, tumbling down. I don’t know which way is up, but trees snap and the Jeep crunches around me, metal jamming into my leg. Flashes of green fill the car and then everything stops. My leg throbs and when I reach down I don’t feel my jeans, only wetness. Something hisses from behind me, and I pray it’s not gas. I try to move, but I’m stuck. Everything blurs and waves, and the car is so twisted I can’t see Drew. But I hear him. He screams for help over and over, his voice going hoarse. I can’t keep my head up and rest it against the door frame. The window’s shattered. My breath comes out short and fast. Mom and Lainey sit around a Monopoly board as I clutch the thimble in my fist. Dad watches me in a crowd as I pound out an intricate drum solo. Drew shoves a basketball at me, sweat dripping down his temples and I sink it into the basket. A coin flips high in the air, copper against a blue sky. And Stevie. Stevie on that first day, standing up to Brent Miller, noticing me. Stevie dancing to Pearl Jam, leaning her head on my shoulder on the train. Stevie kissing me and me breathing her in. The hissing grows louder. Drew screams for help, but he’s fading and then I can’t hear him anymore. My breath comes out short and fast. Short and fast. One, two, one, two. Until it slows, slows … slows.
PART THREE
HEADS
CHAPTER 1
Stevie
THE FUNERAL
We sit in silence on the church steps, remnants of last weekend’s snowstorm beneath our feet. Family left for the gravesite, but we’re not family. We have nowhere to go. He squeezes his eyes shut. After a moment he looks at me, his lashes wet. He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes again. His black suit is wrinkled and I’m sure the thought of ironing it never crossed his mind. I’m in an ugly black dress I bought with Mom at the mall. She plucked it from the rack and said something like this one is pretty, but I wasn’t paying attention.
He pulls his knees up to his chin, burying his face in them. I haven’t talked to him since last week, really talked to him, but I heard what happened. And even as I sit here now, resting my head on his shoulder, part of me hates him, almost as much as I hate mysel
f.
My eyes are so tired it’s like they forgot how to stop tears. When I think I have none left it starts all over again, and I’m wiping my cheeks or soaking my pillow in the middle of the night. Everything in me hurts and this is more than sadness. This is unbearable, like wanting to run but being frozen still. Forced to face a truth I wish was a lie. I’m glued to these church steps, because if I get up and go home, this whole sickening day will have actually happened. And I want to erase it all.
Ironically, the day is perfect. A cloudless December sky. The accident feels like a year ago. They were driving to find me, chasing after my liar’s text. Got in an Uber. Not auditioning. Leave me alone. But I was in the bathroom, nowhere to be found. I allow myself to pick at my cuticle until Drew covers my trembling hand with his.
“Where were you?” he asks quietly, a thin layer of accusation coating his voice. I jerk my head up and pull my hand away. “I texted you nonstop. It took you over an hour to respond. Why?”
I turned my phone off. I was so pissed at them that I needed to silence it all, to get through the audition without all the noise. But now, the idea of them flipping a coin for me seems so trivial. Shane’s gone. I can’t yell and scream at him. I can’t grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he explains himself. Deep down I’m certain he cared about me. I heard the beginning of their conversation and watched the way Shane’s face came alive when he said my name, how it crumbled when he noticed me standing there.
I’ll never hear him apologize.
“I was angry,” I whisper. Now a different anger surges through me, an unstoppable rage burning in my gut—at Drew, at myself, at the whole damn universe. “I turned my phone off.”
“I called your house.” Drew’s eyes are flat, hollow. His dark hair falls over a large bandage on his forehead. “Your mom said you weren’t home yet. How is that possible? You left before we did.”
I close my eyes, stinging tears seeping through the lids. My breath is caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat. I can’t look at him.
“I didn’t leave.” My voice is a garbled mess. The December air bites at my tear-stained cheeks, but I barely feel it. “I was in the student union bathroom when I texted you.”
The realization falls over Drew’s face like a cloud shifting in front of the sun. His chest heaves up and down fast and he winces like it hurts to breathe. I bite at my lip as my throat gets tight, my lungs pinched together in agony.
“You never got in an Uber?” Drew’s nostrils flare.
“No,” I whisper, my face drenched in tears. “I only texted about the Uber so you and Shane would leave. So I could audition with a clear head. I was upset and turned my phone off.”
Drew stands and sways a bit before stepping to me, favoring his right leg. He clasps his hands behind his head as his breath forms a ghostly cloud that quickly vanishes in the air. I can feel his eyes on me, but I don’t have the strength to look at him, to witness the pain I caused.
“We were chasing after you, Stevie. We were chasing after you, and you weren’t even there.”
I finally shift my eyes to Drew’s, and he looks like he’s about to get sick. I’m crying so hard my shoulders begin to shake.
“I know,” I choke out. “Don’t you think I know that?”
This tiny detail, this one small link in a chain of events that led to the worst possible event, will haunt me forever. It’ll stay with me. It’ll torture me and follow me, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself.
“Fuck,” he whispers to himself. He breathes in and out fast, like he’s about to hyperventilate. “I can’t think straight.”
“What happened?” I ask because I need the truth, from his lips only. I need to know what went down in the car, on that road, to try and understand what my mind is struggling to unravel.
“I can’t do this,” Drew says, walking to a row of hedges beside the church, a few tiny flowers still clinging to life in spite of the snow last week. “I can’t fucking do this.”
“I need to know what happened, please.” My heart clenches in my chest as my voice breaks. “You’re the only one who can tell me.”
Drew takes a deep breath in and pinches the bridge of his nose again, looking at the sky. Tears spill out the corner of his eyes and he pushes them away.
“It was the snow and the damn deer,” Drew says, his voice strained, like it hurts to say each word. “Shane took off his seatbelt. Wanted his jacket off, God knows why. A deer jumped out of nowhere. Shane grabbed the wheel and jerked it away from me. He got scared. He was so scared.”
He crouches in front of the bushes, his back rising and falling fast. I follow him, putting my hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs me off.
“And I—I couldn’t control the car. I lost control,” Drew whispers, then turns and gets sick all over the flowers.
* * *
We don’t talk during the drive home from the funeral. Drew doesn’t bother turning on the radio. It’s the loudest kind of silence, the kind that makes your head hurt from all the screaming inside. We’re in a loaner car, similar to his old one which must be totaled. This Jeep is olive green and filled with that chemical new car smell. No Mardi Gras beads swing from the rearview mirror. Drew drives carefully, waiting an extra beat at stop signs and slowing for yellow lights instead of blazing through them. When he pulls up to my house, I jump out before the Jeep is fully in park.
Drew rolls down the window and yells, “Stevie, wait.”
I don’t have the energy to turn around, but I stop walking, midway up the path to my front porch. Shane’s funeral crashes through me. It settles on my skin and through my body, now a permanent piece of me.
“We didn’t mean it,” Drew says. He’s talking about the coin toss, trying to make one thing right in a world where everything has gone wrong. “Shane and me…”
“Shane’s dead,” I say, my back to Drew. My legs give out and my knees crash to the pavement.
The car door opens, then slams shut again. I expect to hear Drew’s boots on the walkway, but then I remember he wore dress shoes for the funeral. When I glance over my shoulder, he’s on the hood of his car, like that night at the beach. But he’s hunched over, balled into himself. I make my way back to the car and climb up next to him, pulling the hem of my dress over my knees.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the cold air sending a shiver across my skin. I apologize for being so blunt. I apologize for being in that bathroom, for lying. I even apologize for Drew’s pain, my pain. But an apology will never be enough.
“It’s all my fucking fault,” he says quietly. His arms wrap around me, enveloping me in his smell—lemons and pine needles. I want to fall into him, let him hold me, and cry into his shoulder. But I can’t. Because he was driving the car, and he flipped a coin over me, and because most of all, I wish he were Shane.
TAILS
CHAPTER 2
Stevie
MILLBROOK HOSPITAL
The generic black saxophone strap dangles from my neck as I burst through the hospital doors, the smell of ammonia stinging my nose. I sign the visitor sheet at the hospital entrance, my chicken scratch name barely legible.
When I get to the waiting room, Drew doesn’t notice me. He sits on a rust-orange chair, his head bowed in his hands. His knee pokes through a rip in his jeans, jittering up and down like a jackhammer. A white bandage covers most of his right arm and there’s a nasty gash on his cheek.
“Drew?” I ask, my stomach turning over. He slowly raises his head at the sound of my voice. His eyes are raw and desperate.
“Stevie.” The winter pink on his cheeks and nose drains from his exhausted face, his skin bone white. “I texted you.”
“I know.” My heart pounds, desperate to know why Shane isn’t sitting beside Drew, to know where Shane is, praying he’s still here. Back at the audition, I was already panicking. Shane was late to meet me for lunch, and I stopped buying his questionable excuse—that he was helping another drummer. My frantic texts
went unanswered and as each minute passed in silence, I tore another cuticle from my nail. Moments before my turn, a message from Drew detailing the car wreck and the hospital address dinged on my phone. Suddenly, the audition didn’t matter.
“There was a car accident. Shane.” Drew tries to stand but thinks better of it. His hand trembles as he stares at me. He keeps talking, telling me the pieces I already know. I grab hold of the black neck strap, the one Shane gave me, his voice encouraging me, believing in me. A sickness swims in my stomach, threatening to push its way up my throat. Drew takes a deep breath as his nostrils flare and his eyes cloud over with tears. He closes them for a second and starts again.
“He was at your house. He left the audition to look for your red neck strap. He found it and asked me to drive him back to Rutgers, to bring it to you.”
He left the audition for me, for a piece of fabric. For a moment my heart expands at Shane’s selflessness, but then I notice the blood stain on the bottom of Drew’s sweatshirt. My stomach revolts again as pins and needles march across my skin.
“It’s pretty bad, Stevie.” His voice is completely shot, like he’s been screaming.
All at once I can’t feel my legs and I lean into the chair next to Drew, my breath coming out fast.
“Is he…”
I can’t get the words out. My mouth is dry, like I swallowed sandpaper. My ice-cold hands rake at my knees as the room begins to spin.
“He’s not awake.” Drew’s dark eyes swim with sadness. “They’re not sure if he’s going to wake up.”
HEADS
CHAPTER 3
Stevie
Where It All Lands Page 25