Live to Tell

by Lisa Harrington

  I pulled up a mental image of Cal, remembered his eyes and the way he had looked at me. “I think he might be the type who likes every girl. Probably has a bajillion girlfriends.”

  She scribbled something on my chart. “One of those, huh? Been there, done that. So-o-o not worth it.”

  For a brief moment, I actually smiled.

  Pouring me a glass of apple juice, she smiled back. “Let’s hope we’re wrong, though.”

  “Like I said, it doesn’t matter. I’m with Nate.” Saying his name made me realize how much I missed him, how much I wished he was here with me. I looked away, wanting her to finish doing her thing and leave.

  “Hey!” she exclaimed. “You got your crutches. How are you making out with them?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, what do you say we get you up and take a spin around the room?”

  Shrinking into my pillow, I didn’t answer. I knew that’s what I was supposed to be doing. Mom had forced me to try them out last night, and it was hard. I hated it.

  “Come on, Libby. Your roommate was discharged this morning. You’ve got the whole room to practise in.”

  She wasn’t going to let me weasel out of it. I carefully sat up and moved my legs to hang over the side of the bed. My cast weighed a ton and pain exploded up my leg, making my eyes water.

  “Here. Let me get you started,” Trina offered.

  I waved her away, knowing I should at least attempt to do it myself. My entire body ached, especially my chest, and every limb felt stiff and leaden. Once upright and balancing on the crutches, I felt dizzy; Trina had to hold my elbow until it passed.

  Together we made an excruciatingly slow circle of the room. By the third loop, we managed to pick up the pace a little and Trina didn’t have to reach out to steady me. My hands were killing me and I knew there was some kind of rash breaking out under my arms, but it actually felt good to be vertical.

  “I’m going to change your sheets while you’re up,” Trina announced.

  “Okay. I’ll keep practising.”

  The door was ajar and I caught a glimpse of Mom and Dad in the hall. Thinking I might show them my progress, something a tiny bit positive, I moved towards the door. Then I stopped. My heart sank. The detectives were back. They were all standing in a circle, talking. The detective’s voices were low and calm. Mom and Dad’s voices were high and agitated.

  I glanced over at Trina. She was occupied. I pressed myself up against the wall alongside the door, out of their line of vision. Leaning sideways, I listened.

  “How are we going to tell her? She says she doesn’t even remember being in the car. You don’t know her. She wouldn’t lie,” Mom said.

  Detective Shaw sighed. “Mrs. Thorne. I don’t want to be the one to burst your bubble, but if we had a dime for every time we’ve heard that one, we’d both be retired by now.”

  “She’s not lying about this!” I could tell Mom was angry, offended. “Because if she really does remember, then there’s no way she’d be able to fake it, she’d be too devastated.”

  “I understand your concerns,” Detective Cooper said, “but we will be moving forward with the case. You should explain to her what’s going to happen.”

  “Diane’s filled us in,” Dad said. “You won’t do anything until she’s been discharged from the hospital though, right?”

  “Yes. When she’s ready to leave, she’ll be taken into custody and charged. We’re still waiting for her blood sample to come back from the crime lab. If it comes back positive, she’ll be charged with impaired driving causing bodily harm.”

  My heart pounded loudly in my ears and my whole body felt light, like my insides were going to float away. For real. I was going to be arrested.

  Dad coughed. “Yes, we understand.”

  “She’s not strong enough for this,” Mom said in a strangled voice. “When she finally —” She started crying and didn’t finish.

  It was quiet for a second, then Detective Shaw said, “Once we take her down to the police station, she’ll have her photo and prints taken. It’s fairly routine. You might want her lawyer there.”

  “Then she’ll be released into our custody?”

  “Yes.”

  The room swam around me and the bed looked miles away. White dots exploded before my eyes. I felt faint and thankful the crutches were there to hold me up. “Trina,” I whimpered.

  She took one look at me, raced over, and helped me back to my bed. There was sweat dripping down my forehead and I couldn’t stop trembling. “You must have done too much,” she said, sponging my face with a cool cloth. “I’ll get you some fresh water.”

  I lay in bed, trying to pull myself together, going over everything I’d just heard. Arrested. Me. Arrested. And then something made me stop. Bodily harm? They said Cal was okay. That’s what everyone had told me.

  “Here. Drink this.” Trina held a cup to my lips.

  I gulped some down, then immediately rolled over and threw up. “Sorry,” I croaked.

  “No worries,” Trina said, wiping my mouth. “Great aim. You cleared the bed. I did just change the sheets, you know.”

  I closed my eyes and listened to her in the bathroom, running water, wringing out the face cloth.

  “I’ll send someone in to clean up the floor,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  A JOLT TO MY bed snapped my eyes open. A man’s wrinkled face, bushy white moustache, stared back at me, not more than a few inches away. Thinking I was having a nightmare, I opened my mouth to scream.

  “The handle dinged your rail, sweetie, didn’t mean to wake you,” the man said. He was hunched over beside me, swishing a mop under my bed.

  “Oh,” I breathed, relieved. I hadn’t heard anyone come in. “Sorry about the mess.” My heart was still pounding.

  He grinned. “It’s my job, darlin’.”

  I lay there and quietly watched him slide the mop back and forth until he’d worked his way out the door. The floor was almost dry by the time Mom and Dad arrived. They both looked drained and pale.

  I probably looked as white as a sheet too. We were a trio of ghosts, but they seemed distracted and didn’t notice.

  “Who got hurt?” I blurted, bracing for the answer.

  They stopped in their tracks, exchanged confused looks.

  “What?” Mom asked.

  “I heard you in the hall,” I confessed. “They said I’m being charged with bodily harm. That must mean I hurt somebody. Like really hurt somebody.”

  It was Dad who spoke. “Libby —”

  “Jason.” Mom touched his arm and shook her head.

  “Meredith.” His voice was gentle. “The longer we keep it from her, the harder it’s going to be.”

  “But the doctor … he said to let —”

  “But she heard us. She can’t un-hear something.”

  “Please. Don’t.” Mom was practically begging. I’d never seen her look like that before.

  Dad was silent for a long time then, “We have to at least explain what she heard.”

  Mom stared down at the floor.

  “Libby … that night … you hit someone with the car.”

  “What?” The word came out of my mouth, but it wasn’t my voice.

  No one answered. No one wanted to repeat it.

  “Are they going to be okay?” I cried.

  Dad seemed uncomfortable. His eyes darted around the room like he wasn’t sure where he should be looking.

  “We hope so.” Mom brushed a tear from her cheek. “Right now it’s touch and go.”

  It felt like there was a belt around my chest and it was being tightened slowly, one notch at a time. “This can’t be happening,” I whispered, wishing someone would shake me and wake me from this horrible nightmare.

  HOURS LATER, I FINALLY convinced Mom and Dad to go home. I felt so weak and pathetic, so sorry for myself, that the thought of them hovering around my bedside trying to console me was unbearable.

  My stomach heaved
like I was on a roller coaster, and I thought I might be sick again. I grabbed the rail and turned myself sideways just in case. Cold sweat prickled across my forehead. I took a few deep breaths, in through my nose, out through my mouth, and squeezed the rail as tight as I could until my stomach settled.

  After the nausea went away, I lay back down. My hand ached. It was the one my IV had been in and the fingers were all cramped up from holding the rail. I unfolded my hand, flexed my fingers. On my palm were four angry red marks shaped like crescent moons from where my nails had been digging in. I studied them closely. There was something about those marks. I stared off into space for a second, trying to figure it out. Then it all came rushing at me like a giant wave.

  The schoolyard was deserted. I sat there on the grass, the chain clenched in my fist. One by one I peeled my fingers back. Four red, crescent-shaped marks. The chain glittered in the afternoon sun. I turned my hand slightly and it tumbled, as if in slow motion, onto the grass. I didn’t want it anymore. Why would I? The ring was gone. He’d asked for it back.

  “Libby! For God’s sake. What the hell?”

  I looked up at Kasey, but didn’t really see her.

  “I’ve been calling your cell. Did you check your messages?”

  I shook my head.

  “You were supposed to meet me like twenty minutes ago. Why didn’t …?” She paused and took a good look at me. “What’s wrong?” Then the chain lying in a heap caught her eye. “Oh crap. Let me guess. Nate.”

  “He’s getting back with Julia.”

  Kasey slid her arms out of her knapsack and settled herself beside me on the grass. “She’s such a bitch. You guys would have been fine if she’d only got a life and left you alone.”

  “He said he was worried about her, something about her parents splitting and she wasn’t taking it well.”

  “Bullshit. She’s a mattress-back, you’re not. There’s your real reason.”

  “Kasey. He said she tried to kill herself.”

  Kasey pinched her lips together like she was trying to stop words from coming out. She picked the chain up off the grass. “So he took back his ring, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t have kept it anyway.”

  I touched my cheeks. They were hot and wet. “This can’t be real,” I whispered. But I knew, deep down, that it was. I remembered. Nate broke up with me. Just a few days before the party. How could I have forgotten that? And now I had to relive it again? It was like he dumped me twice. Whoever or whatever was in charge of mapping out my destiny was doing a real shitty job.

  The accident, the police, the guy I hit, Nate — my self-pity was increasing by the minute. I started to cry harder, until all my tears were gone and I’d practically hyperventilated. “Good air in, bad air out,” I chanted over and over. My heart hurt so much — it was as if someone had stabbed it with a knife, then viciously turned it.

  How much worse could things get?

  Some tears must have hung back and slowly trickled out of the corners of my eyes.

  The cold reality of it was that things could get worse, way worse.

  Chapter 4

  “You should think about letting Emma come for a visit today,” Mom said, passing me my toothbrush. “She’s been asking.”

  I didn’t answer right away. My mind was still clogged up with images of Nate and the fact that we were over. The only good thing that came from remembering ... good wasn’t the right word — constructive. The only constructive thing that came from remembering was at least now there was sort of an explanation for Cal. Definitely — I would have been licking my wounds over being freshly dumped. So did that make me act a little reckless? Or when I met Cal, did we totally hit it off ? Maybe I really liked him. Did something actually happen between us? Who knows? I was still missing way too much information.

  Should I tell Mom? What would it matter now? The breakup happened long before that night. It seemed so inconsequential compared to everything else that was going on.

  “So, Emma? A visit?” Mom tried again.

  I finished brushing and stared at myself in the mirror. I looked like crap. Bruises, cuts, stitches, gross hair, sunken eyes, red from all the crying, lined with black circles that went down to my nose — a character straight from a zombie movie. “No,” I said.

  “Libby. You can’t hide away forever.”

  “Yeah, I can.” Hobbling from the bathroom, I sat down and lifted my cast up onto the bed. What was Mom thinking? Expecting me to visit with Emma like everything was normal. “Have you heard anything? The person I hit … how are they?”

  She started straightening the pile of magazines on my bedside table, re-positioning the cards. “I don’t think we should talk about that right now. Wait ’til you’re feeling better.”

  “Mom, please.”

  She sighed. “No change. But we’re going to stay positive, right?”

  I didn’t answer. I still couldn’t believe what had happened. And that I couldn’t remember it.

  “Anyhow,” Mom continued. “Seeing Emma might do you some good.”

  “I said no, Mom.”

  Running her hands through her hair, she gave me a tired look. “I’m going to go down to Tim’s and get a coffee. Do you want anything?”

  “No.”

  She slung her purse over her shoulder and left the room.

  I lay there feeling useless, feeling sick about everything. I tugged open the drawer beside the bed. Dad had dropped a roll of TUMS in there the other day. My hand felt around. There was a whole bunch of stuff — hard candy, suckers, gum … Was it all for me? Where’d it come from? My fingers found the TUMS. I was peeling off the tinfoil when something made me look up. It was a head peeking around the door. Kasey.

  “Pssst. Can I come in?”

  I wanted to shake my head. Somehow it came out as a nod. She checked back over her shoulder and tiptoed in.

  We looked at each other for a long, awkward moment. Neither of us wanted to speak first or knew what to say.

  “Wow,” Kasey finally said. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but you look … great.” She was the worst liar ever. I tried to raise my eyebrows, but it hurt too much.

  “Thanks for letting me in. I know you don’t want to see anyone.”

  It was so good to see her, but I was afraid I’d burst into tears if I spoke.

  She leaned forward to look at my stitches. “Ouch. You really look like hell.”

  “Thanks,” I finally said.

  “Yeah. You’ve taken the smoky eye to a whole new level.”

  “Thanks again.” I even attempted a smile.

  Then, out of nowhere, her eyes teared up. “Oh Lib, I feel like it’s all my fault.”

  I looked at her like she was crazy. “What are you talking about?” She plunked down in the chair, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and started talking, but it was all broken sentences. “It was my idea … I made you go … I left you alone … That costume …”

  “Costume?”

  “Yeah, I lent you a —” She stopped. “You lent me a?”

  “A cheerleader outfit,” she confessed, then added, “You looked amazing.”

  “Cheerleader.” Oh. That weird comment from Cal now made a bit more sense. “Cheerleader,” I repeated. A blurry memory began to come together and take shape in my mind.

  Kasey’s nails ticked, tick against my bedroom window. I gave her the “all clear” nod and she pulled herself over the ledge and dropped to the floor.

  “We have a front door, you know,” I told her. “Just sayin’.”

  “And see that ‘disapproving,’” she put her hands up and made air quotes, “look on your mom’s face? No thanks.”

  “You’re so imagining that.”

  She kneeled down and unzipped her knapsack. “Don’t bother. We both know she can’t stand me. But it doesn’t matter. Forget that. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Did I mention Tori’s party was a costume party?”
<
br />   I put up both hands. “No way. I’m out. Plus, I don’t have a costume.” Thank God.

  She smiled slyly. “How did I know you were going to say that?” Then she pulled out something red and white from her knapsack, a cheerleader costume, complete with pompoms.

  “I repeat, no way.”

  “Oh come on. Monica wore it to a Halloween party last year, said the guys couldn’t take their eyes off her, said you’d be able to pull it off way better than me. Nice, huh? Anyway, I’m going as a nurse, the ol’ standby.” She waved her hand in the air. “But whatev. It’ll be a blast.”

  Kasey did my hair and makeup. “You look hot. I’m allowed to say that, by the way, because I’m your best friend.”

  I looked in the mirror. It was like I was looking at someone who wasn’t quite me, like it was the part of me that was never allowed to see the light of day. I smoothed the pleated skirt over my hips and turned sideways. I looked pretty damn good.

  “Are you okay?” Kasey asked. “Your face is doing some weird stuff.”

  “Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes until I saw spots. “I, uh, remember. I remember dressing up like a cheerleader.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything.” She looked worried and her eyes filled with tears again. “See? Everything’s my fault.”

  “Stop. Nothing’s your fault,” I said, relieved for once not to be the one falling apart.

  “If I had stayed with you, if I hadn’t left you alone,” she sniffed, “none of this would have happened.”

  “Kasey, please don’t say stuff like that. There’s no one to blame but myself.”

  “I didn’t see you leave.”

  “Kase …” I could feel my eyes starting to fill too. I offered her a box of Kleenex, but she shook her head and stared at the floor.

  After a couple minutes of us both sobbing together in stereo, I

  actually felt a little better.

  “Well, that’s enough crying for today,” she said, furiously blinking her eyes. Then she noticed the open drawer full of candy. “Those Tootsie pops, those are from me, you know. I rearranged the packages so you got all purple.”

  I looked into the drawer, saw the suckers, and then I saw Tori. She stood on her porch, handing out Tootsie pops as we filed in her front door. “Welcome and Happy Halloween,” she greeted.