“It’s not your blood,” Mom said, her voice high, nervous. “We saw you, when the ambulance came in, and at first we thought . . .” She shook her head. “But you were all right. You were fine. Just fine.”
“We made it,” I tell him, “we’re all right,” but he doesn’t blink, doesn’t move, and when I go back to him there is nothing to feel in his throat and his skin is wet and cooling. The rain smells like metal, like blood, and keeps pouring into his open eyes, making tears. I lean over his face, covering him from the rain, watching his eyes as I wipe his mouth with my shirt. He doesn’t blink. His chest doesn’t rise and fall. He doesn’t see that we have lived.
“Come on,” I say, pleading, but he doesn’t answer.
Mom’s hand cupped my chin. “Meggie, you’re fine,” she said, and her eyes welled with tears. “You’re a miracle.”
“I’m really tired,” I said, and pushed the clothes away. “Do you think it would be okay if I slept for a while?”
I didn’t think I’d sleep but I did. The last thing I remembered was opening my eyes to see if Mom and Dad were still there. If they were still watching me.
They were.
Four
In the morning I was released from the hospital. Someone came in to talk to me first. A counselor. Her name was Donna, and she had the whitest, brightest smile I’d ever seen.
She sat down next to me and said, “I’ve been looking forward to speaking to you,” in a voice so bright and interested that I flinched, yet another person eager for me. She wanted to know what I was thinking about and when Mom said, “She’s thinking she’s glad to be going home,” Donna asked her and Dad to leave, said they should come back in an hour.
When they were gone she asked me again how I was feeling (“Fine”), how I was sleeping (“Fine”), and if I had anything I wanted to “share.” I thought about telling the truth, that the visit wasn’t necessary since I couldn’t remember anything, but she was leaning forward, staring at me like whatever I was going to say would change her life.
It freaked me out. Her questions, her staring, and I wished—
I wished Mom and Dad would stop looking at me like Donna was.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to share?” she asked again.
“I’m tired of Jell-O,” I said.
She smiled and said, “You seem very calm, Megan.” It didn’t exactly sound like a compliment and I don’t think it was one because then she asked me about the memorial service and said, “Would you like to have gone?”
I nodded. She asked if I wanted to talk about the crash and when I shook my head she said, “Sharing the experience will help you heal.”
And then she just sat there. She was still leaning forward, still staring at me, and it was like she wanted to eat everything I said. Like she was hungry for what was inside my head and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like her.
I didn’t like any of this.
Mom came in then, looking tense. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but we’re anxious to take Megan home and you seem to be—she looks upset.”
“Megan and I have only spoken for a few minutes,” Donna said. “I was just going to ask her about her walk through Round Hills.”
“Her walk?” Mom said, voice rising, carrying, and Dad came in then. He said, “Meggie has been through enough and we don’t need you bothering her. We’ll be leaving now. Thank you for your time.”
Donna looked at my parents and then at me. “I think you might benefit from talking to someone,” she told me. “Where do you live?”
“Reardon.”
Donna blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I can give you the name of someone in Derrytown.”
Derrytown is eighty-five miles away and I think we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. She gave me her card as she left anyway and said, “Please know you can call me.”
I held it like it hurt my hand and Dad threw it away, then hugged me hard. “We’re gonna take you home, baby girl,” he said. “Everyone’s waiting to see you.”
We left in a car that wasn’t ours, Mom and Dad and me hidden behind the tinted windows of a minivan. The driver, who worked for the hospital, told us we were heading to a rest stop out on the highway where we’d pick up Dad’s truck so no reporters would follow us.
As we drove away, I saw reporters standing outside the hospital, leaning against vans painted with television station logos. There were so many of them.
Some of them were giving reports, lights shining on them as they smiled.
“I understand you turned down all media requests,” the driver said. I shivered, and Mom nodded, smiling briefly. “We did. We just want to get Meggie home and get back to our normal lives.”
That sounded good, but all the way home she and Dad kept looking at me, like they were afraid that if they didn’t, I’d be gone.
I stared out the windshield, telling myself things would be okay when we got home. I saw the forest, the sharp rise of the hills. I’d walked across them. I’d been in a plane that had crashed into them. I’d lived, and I didn’t remember any of the people who’d died.
I didn’t remember anything.
We got to Reardon in the afternoon, and I could see people at our house as soon as we turned onto our street. They were standing on the lawn, in the driveway, on the front porch, and it seemed like they all waved at once, a sea of hands and reaching arms, and as soon as I got out of the car, people started hugging me. I saw Mom and Dad, both of them crying again, as I was passed from one hug to another. I knew all the faces I saw, of course, but it was strange to see so many of them so fast.
I finally got to see David, who didn’t hug me but instead just stared at me, his eyes wide. He’d managed to cut his forehead, and the bandage someone had put on it was already starting to come off.
“What happened to your hair?”
“Nothing,” Mom said, putting an arm around me and pulling me close. “The doctors just had to cut it a little.”
I reached up and touched it. It was a lot shorter than I remembered. I have my dad’s hair, brown and thick, and I’d grown it out so it hit the small of my back. At soccer camp I’d been able to wind it up and tuck it into a bun without any clips, feel the heavy weight resting low on my neck. Now it barely reached my shoulders and the ends were brittle, snapping off when I touched them.
It was burnt. My hair had been . . . it had been on fire. I’d seen myself in mirrors at the hospital, I knew I had. How had I not seen this? How had I not seen myself?
“What else is wrong with me?” I asked, scrabbling my fingers over my neck, feeling for blisters, raw patches. All I felt was skin.
“Nothing, Meggie, nothing,” Mom said, stilling my hand with hers. “You’re fine, perfectly fine. David, run along inside, please.”
“But, Mom, I—” David said, his voice fading as more people crowded around me. I was hugged again, this time by Jess and Lissa, both of them talking over each other so fast I couldn’t understand a word they said. They smelled like suntan lotion and chlorine from Lissa’s pool. They smelled like summer. Like normal. I hugged them back, hard.
“Oh my God, Meggie,” Jess said, waving her boyfriend, Brian, over. “When we heard what happened and saw pictures of the plane—”
“But then we saw pictures of you,” Lissa said, and then they were both crying and laughing at the same time, smiling so broad Jess’s dimples were stretched tight and Lissa’s braces glinted bright in the sun. I felt strange, like the ground under me wasn’t quite real and was glad to be pulled away, hugged by Brian and then Mom’s boss and then some of the guys on Dad’s softball team.
I heard someone ask Mom if she’d heard from her parents and watched her shake her head, frowning for a moment before she looked over at me. The frown turned into a smile but the expression in her eyes wasn’t happy. She looked almost frightened.
“All right, everyone,” Dad said, coming up behind Mom and wrapping his arms around her and me. “What do you say we al
l go inside? The church set up a buffet, and Meggie hasn’t had anything to eat but hospital food for days.” He grinned at me. “I bet real food sounds good right about now, doesn’t it?”
I nodded, and everyone started heading inside.
The whole town seemed to be in our house and by the time I’d made it halfway across the kitchen I was light-headed.
I made it to the kitchen table, where Reverend Williams led everyone in a prayer and then people took turns talking about how amazing I was. How brave I was. What a miracle I was.
I kept touching my hair, finding burnt pieces and snapping them off. David ran through the kitchen, the bandage on his forehead gone, showing a deep gash that started in his hair and ran all the way down to right above his left eyebrow. I waited for Mom to get up and run after him with the hydrogen peroxide and first aid kit, but she stayed where she was, next to me with one hand stroking down the length of my back.
“I’m happy to be home,” I said over and over again, until it sounded like less than words, like it was nothing. “I’m just so happy.”
The thing was, I didn’t feel happy.
I didn’t feel anything.
Dad excused himself, glancing at Mom as he got up from the table, and I watched as he went over to our next-door neighbor, Mr. Reynolds, who was obviously drunk, stood swaying and holding a picture in his hands. Dad said something to him, and Mr. Reynolds pointed at the picture. Dad looked behind him, frowning, and then I saw the back of Joe’s neck as he came over to his father and walked him to the door. Lots of heads turned as he left, all female, and I saw a couple of girls move toward the living room window so they could look at Joe walking his father home.
The person who was hugging me took my face in their hands, turning me toward them. I heard the words “precious” and “wonderful” and “God’s will.” My skin felt smeared and rubbery, and I said I had to use the bathroom. People actually cleared a path for me as I walked to it. I saw Lissa and waited for her to laugh or roll her eyes but she just stepped back along with everyone else.
When I got into the bathroom I shut the door and then stood there staring at myself in the mirror. I looked fine. Like I had a bad haircut, but fine. How could someone like me survive a plane crash? I didn’t look like someone who could do that.
I wasn’t someone who could do that.
Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I was dead. Maybe I was lying on the ground somewhere, rain falling over me, into my open eyes. I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t see anything. Didn’t see me. I leaned forward and rested my head against the sink. It was cold.
I took a deep breath and then another, the way I did before a game, when I needed to focus. It didn’t work. I felt like I was outside myself, like I wasn’t in my body. I felt like I could see myself standing slumped over the sink, and that any second my body would fall over and stop moving, stop breathing. Stop everything.
I felt like I was lost from myself, like I wasn’t really here. What if the reason why I couldn’t remember anything was because none of this was real? What if I wasn’t real?
I knew I was breathing but yet I was sure, somehow, that I wasn’t. The sink suddenly smelled like smoke, like burning, and I stood up so fast I had to lean against the wall, dizzy.
I knew I was alive then. Dead people didn’t get dizzy. Dead people didn’t feel like they weren’t breathing when they were.
I did.
And I didn’t know why.
Why had I lived?
And why—why wasn’t I happy about it?
I don’t know how I got through the next couple of hours. I waded through all the people crowded into our downstairs, pasting a smile on my face as they talked at me, hugged me more. I ate pasta salad and potato salad and gelatin salad and cake and a chicken casserole that Margaret, who lived right across from the church, had brought over.
“Try it,” she said as she handed me a plate, her old-lady arms flapping around in her T-shirt. “Someone brought it over after the funeral last year and I asked if I could have the recipe.”
“After Rose’s funeral?” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud but it was the first time someone had said something to me that wasn’t about what had happened. That wasn’t about me. Margaret and Rose were best friends and had lived together until Rose passed away.
Margaret nodded and squinted at me from behind her glasses.
“I know a doctor you might want to go see,” she said. “Nice enough, for a doctor, and his practice isn’t too far away either. Dr. Lincoln. He knows a lot about trauma and maybe you’d like to talk to him.”
“I can’t,” I said, thinking of Donna and her staring, of how I had no idea how I’d lived or why, and Margaret squinted at me again.
“Can’t?”
“Can’t what?” Dad said, coming over and helping himself to some of Margaret’s casserole. “This looks great, as always.”
“Thank you, George. I was just telling Meggie about a doctor I know who deals with a lot of trauma cases. I could give you his number or—”
“I think Meggie’s seen more than enough doctors,” Dad said. “Hospital was full of ’em! And besides, she’s safe now and at home where she belongs. We’ll look out for her, and that’s the most important thing. Besides, we have Dr. Weaver, remember?”
Margaret nodded, frowning, and then turned away as Reverend Williams called her name, beckoning her to his side. She and Rose had always volunteered at church, and Margaret still did, basically doing everything except delivering sermons.
I’d liked Rose. She’d looked like a grandmother, short and fat with white hair and a big smile. She baked cookies and always wore sweatshirts that said things like OVER FIFTY BUT NOT OVER THE HILL. She refused to drive anywhere, yet somehow always managed to show up whenever you needed a helping hand. When David first came home she brought a month’s worth of meals, all neatly packaged, and said he was adorable. She sounded like she meant it, and I think she did even though he looked like a raisin.
That night, when it was quiet, I couldn’t sleep. I lay there, sure I wouldn’t, and then woke up with a start, something hot stinging my eyes and throat.
I lay there for a long time, trying to go back to sleep, but I could hear the trees rustling outside and I didn’t like the way they sounded. Plus whenever I closed my eyes, I saw a bright red sky.
After a while it felt better to just make myself stay awake, to stare up at my dark ceiling. To remind myself I was at home, in my room.
To remind myself I was alive.
Five
In the morning, Mom took me to see Dr. Weaver.
On our way there she said, “I know you’re completely fine. It’s just that I’d feel better having Dr. Weaver give you a checkup, and besides, you’d be going to see him around now before you went back to school anyway, right?”
I shrugged. Dr. Weaver had been our family doctor forever. Mom loved him because he’d done so much for David, but I didn’t like him much. He was maybe a few years older than Dad, but he was cranky like he was a hundred. He always talked to Mom about me like I wasn’t there and if I said anything, he would glance at me, one eyebrow raised, and then turn back to Mom.
But this time he came into the room early, before the nurse even arrived, and waved her away when she did, taking my blood pressure and temperature himself. He said my cuts were healing and that my bruises were already starting to fade.
Everything was normal. He said that twice.
“I was sorry to miss your homecoming, Meggie,” he said. “I was over in Clark, visiting family.”
“Oh,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, and saw the nurse out in the hallway, head tilted toward my voice. I saw Dr. Weaver looking me, his eyes curious and eager. Tell me about the crash, they both seemed to be saying. Tell me your story, let me hear what a miracle you are. Let me be a part of it.
“I have to use the bathroom,” I said, and got up.
I didn’t go to the bathroom. I went out to the waitin
g room, still in my jeans and the paper smock I’d had to put on over my bra, and stared at the door. There were trees outside, green and tall. It seemed like they were watching me. Waiting for me.
I sat down, feeling sweat pool in my armpits, across my back. The receptionist stared at me.
“Are you all right?” she asked, sounding bored, and then I saw her expression change, her eyes widen.
“Megan Hathaway,” she breathed, like my name was special, and came out from behind her desk. I watched her talk but didn’t listen, just nodded and let her take me down the hall and back to Dr. Weaver. He and Mom were talking about the crash and as Dr. Weaver motioned for me to sit back down the receptionist joined in, the nurse poking her head in too.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the pictures. The plane, it was just—”
“Completely destroyed. And then I heard that Megan was on it and I—”
“Said to my wife, ‘Look, that’s one of my patients. Wonderful girl, very—’”
“Miraculous. When George and I got the call, we just . . . there aren’t words to describe it. They said she was gone. And then we drove to Staunton and she—” Mom took a breath and the room was so quiet, too quiet, and when I blinked I saw something different, a long narrow corridor with airline blue seats and—
“Can we leave?” I said, the words coming out in a rush, and I grabbed the edge of my paper smock with both hands, my fingers breaking through it.
On the drive home, Mom kept asking me how I felt. I think she knew something was going on with me. But I could tell from the way her hand shook when she smoothed my hair, and from how desperately hopeful her eyes were, that she needed me to be okay. I knew she’d been told I’d died, but I hadn’t really thought about it until then. I hadn’t thought about what it must have done to her.
“I’m fine,” I said, as we waited for a tractor to cross the road, and saw her relax, saw her take a deep breath like she hadn’t been able to breathe properly before.
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