“Hurry,” I force out.
With a snap, it breaks, and the frayed rope falls to the floor.
Ivy wraps her arm underneath me. Her fingers bite into my broken ribs and I grind my teeth together, forcing my throbbing muscles to work.
It takes every ounce of strength for my stiff legs to push me up, but between the two of us, we manage to hoist me to my feet. White-hot knives stab into my sides. Pain shoots up my left leg. Dizziness swarms my brain the moment I’m upright, and the room spins around me. I latch on to my sister’s waist to keep from spilling back to the ground. She puts my arm over her shoulders and we hobble toward the door. I can’t. Every step drains the energy from my limbs like water through a sieve. My knees buckle and Ivy staggers, struggling to support my weight.
Nick’s low voice penetrates the wood. “Yeah, man. I— Oh shit. I’m gonna have to call you back.”
The color drains from Ivy’s face. Our frantic eyes meet each other’s. I try to tell her she should run, she should save herself and get out of here, but my mouth is too dry with dehydration and Nick’s footsteps get louder and I know it’s too late.
She sets me back on the wood floor, my back pressed against the wall facing the door. I hold my breath.
Ivy’s gaze bounces around the small space. She grabs an old metal hammer off a hook. I nod. She tiptoes backward until she hits the wall by the door, her knuckles white around the wooden handle. Shadows conceal her from the light.
Nick charges over the threshold and his eyes lock with mine. My blood runs cold. His upper lip curls into a sneer. “You’re still here.”
I force my eyes to stay trained on his, not daring to blink.
He pulls out his gun and cocks it. “Not waiting around for the—”
Ivy lunges from the shadows and slams the hammer into the back of his head with a sickening crunch. Blood spurts from the wound. He crumples to the ground like a rag doll.
I brace myself. Is he dead? Or just knocked out?
Ivy drops her weapon to the ground with a clang and slaps her hand over her mouth. “Holy shit.” Her feet stumble backward in quick, jerky steps.
“Ivy,” I whisper, pleading with my eyes.
She nods and steps around Nick’s body. My clammy fingers fumble with the weapon in his still fingers. It’s a Colt .45. Liam taught me how to shoot a gun once. Fuck. Why didn’t I pay better attention?
The room swims. I can’t even see straight, let alone aim a weapon, and I doubt Ivy could do it, either. I slide the gun under the tarp-covered lawn mower. At least they can’t use it against us. I lean into my sister and let her help me up, my arm slung over her shoulders. We slowly stumble out of the shed, into the dusky morning.
They say when adrenaline hits, a person can lift a car by themselves. Walking outside, forcing my broken body to keep going, feels a lot like lifting a car. But dammit, I lift the car.
Everything looks different out here. The tiny shed sits at the back of the property among the trees. The outline of a tan house peeks through the thick trunks and pine needles.
“This way.” Ivy steers us toward the side of the house, half carrying me. “I’ve got your bike.”
Shallow breaths tear through my lungs, each gulp of air like swallowing razors. A hacking cough tears my body in half, and blood sprays from my mouth, coloring the dirt red.
Branches crack beneath our feet. Too loud. We’re being too loud.
A door slams, stealing the breath from my lungs. Patrick’s father stands between us and the road, a handgun clutched in his hands.
“C’mon!” Ivy steers us back the way we came.
The man charges toward us and we hobble to the cover of the thick trees, Ivy struggling under my weight.
He follows, his footsteps slow and deliberate, and cocks his weapon. A gunshot cracks through the air. Ivy screams, nearly dropping me.
I push myself, my muscles screaming, but my broken body can’t go any faster. I won’t make it. My foot hooks on a tree root protruding from the ground and I lose my footing, nearly taking Ivy down with me.
“Go.” I shove Ivy away from me as I hit the ground, gasping for air.
Indecision crosses Ivy’s face.
Pain clouds my vision. I can barely force the breath out of my broken lungs. “Go!”
Ivy drops to the ground, hooks her hands under my arms, and pulls, but the movement slices into my body. Pain splinters through my core. Finally she releases me and I fall back to the earth.
I pant on all fours, focusing on the wet grass and dirt beneath me. His footsteps thump, louder and louder, in time with my heart, until they stop and I can see the tips of his brown boots in the dirt, twenty feet away. I slowly raise my head.
“Will’s already in jail. I can’t let him blow his life in prison.” Patrick’s father raises his gun, trained on me. “I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters . . .
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .
A crack of thunder breaks the silence. I wrench my eyes open.
My ears ring. A flock of birds bursts from the tree overhead. I flinch, waiting for the pain, waiting for the darkness to consume me. For a moment, everything goes still.
Ivy stands in front of me, shielding my body.
She falls to the cold earth at my feet, a spot of red blooming from her chest. It takes me a second to process. Her face blanches.
Oh my God.
The world grinds to a halt in slow motion around me. It’s not happening. She didn’t get shot. I don’t. I can’t. She didn’t. No.
The wind roars, bitter with the stench of blood. A scream rips from my core, stabbing into my lungs like a thousand knives.
Patrick’s dad lowers his weapon, his eyes wide, as if it’s just dawning on him that he shot someone.
“Fuck.” He drops his gun and stumbles backward, his hands behind his head. “Oh fuck.” His face scrunches. “Shit. Ivy. I didn’t . . .” He holds a fist in front of his mouth. “I’m so . . . fuck.” He turns around and charges into the woods, his footsteps pounding softer and softer until they disappear.
“Ivy.” I crawl toward her, my body suddenly numb. Her blood leaks across my tremoring hands. “Ivy. Ivy!”
Her eyelids droop low over her eyes, seeing something or someone far away. “Autumn.”
Tears cloud my vision. The pain overwhelms me, and I feel myself fading.
Sirens wail somewhere, getting louder.
I collapse beside my sister, the ground cold and hard against my back. My fingers entwine with Ivy’s as the world dims. Pine trees tower high over our heads, but the sunlight still cracks in between the needles.
I squeeze my sister’s sweaty hand and pretend we’re somewhere far away.
The last thing I see are blue and red lights flashing in the distance, before everything fades to black.
THURSDAY
THREE DAYS LATER
IVY
The smell hits me first. It’s like a large bottle of disinfectant erupted in a tiny space. My eyelids flutter open. A groggy haze wraps my whole body in a blanket, distorting everything. Like the whole world was painted by soft watercolors that bleed into each other. It takes my eyes a second to adjust.
A soft pillow cushions my head, and there’s a warm blanket wrapped around my lower half. My forehead creases.
“There she is, there’s Ms. Ivy. You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness all week.” A young woman in polka-dotted nurses’ scrubs smiles down at me. She grabs my left wrist and presses two fingers to it. “Just taking your vitals. I’m Nurse Emma, by the way, but feel free to call me Emma.”
A heart-rate monitor beeps steadily beside me.
> I try to sit up, and a sharp pain slices through my chest. I grimace, sinking back to the pillow.
Emma’s eyes grow wide. “Oh, don’t do that, sweetie. You took a bullet to the chest, and it’s probably best you just lie there for a while.”
I did what?
It takes me a second. My memory kicks in way slower than my body, like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.
“What . . . happened?” Pushing out the words feels like talking with a mouthful of cotton balls laced in barbed wire. “How am I . . . here?”
Emma raises her brows. “You got real lucky. The bullet missed vital organs by this much.” She holds up her thumb and forefinger really close together. “You got a punctured lung and severe internal bleeding. You’re lucky it was only a .22 handgun. But you would’ve died if the ambulance had been about ten minutes later.”
“Holy shit.” My words come out raspy and thick. “I mean, holy crap.”
She smiles. “You saved your sister’s life.”
“I did?” It all slowly trickles back into place. Patrick’s dad. The gun. Autumn. “Is Autumn okay? Where is she?”
“She’s right down the hall. Unfortunately we didn’t have the right space to put you two in a room together, so your poor dad’s been going back and forth between them for the last three days.” She thrusts her thumb over her shoulder, and it’s the first time I notice my dad, passed out in a chair. “He’s barely slept since you girls got in.”
“Oh.” I don’t know why that surprises me so much, but it does.
I glance down at my right hand and immediately wish I hadn’t, because there’s a giant tube stuck into it. I hate needles even more than I hate spiders, and that is a very high bar. “Can you take that out?”
“Soon, dear. You’ve gotta get your fluids. But the doctor says you both might be ready to discharge in a few days, although you might take a little longer.” She clicks her tongue. “Can’t just take a bullet to the chest and walk right out.”
“They took the bullet out, though, right?” I rasp. “Can I keep it?” I mean, seriously, the least I deserve from this ordeal is a souvenir to prove that once in my life, I did something totally badass.
Emma looks at me like I just asked to rip the divider curtain off the wall and use it as a cape. “Um. I can talk to the doctor and see what we can do. You still sound pretty dehydrated, though—drink up.” She points to the swivel table next to the bed.
Three giant vases of flowers are on it, along with a Styrofoam cup with a straw poking out. I grab the cup and take a long swig, relishing the cool water washing over my dry mouth. Emma must catch me looking at the flowers, because she says, “You’re very popular.”
“Who are they from?”
She checks the tag on the biggest one. “This one’s from Sean, Anna, Micah, and Jason?”
Of course Jason’s parents would send me an enormous bouquet of flowers. I love how they signed it from everyone, even though I’m pretty sure Micah and Jason weren’t involved. My heart sinks. Jason. I wish I could erase that awful fight at the party. I wonder if I can just stay in the hospital for a few months until he forgets about it.
“Your father brought these daisies, and this last one is from”—she checks the tag—“Ms. Fournier and Patrick?”
I’m taken aback. “Oh.” Wasn’t expecting that at all. I mean, deep down I knew he wasn’t involved. But still. His dad took my sister hostage in a shed. What friendship can withstand that?
I swallow hard. I hope ours can.
“You also got a bunch of cards. One of your teachers dropped them off yesterday.” She points to the stack of cards sitting on the chair. Getting shot gets people to notice you, I guess.
There’s a small TV screen embedded in the wall, playing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It’s right before the hedge-maze scene, which is my favorite scene in the book, and probably in my top five scenes from the movies, even though they cut all the best parts.
“Can you turn it up?” I rasp.
Emma smiles, ticking the volume up a few notches. “Your dad thought you’d like this movie. You’ve got to drink more of that water, though, okay?”
I nod and take another sip. “Can I see my sister?”
She gives me a sympathetic smile. “Soon. When one of you is healthy enough to walk.”
The next few hours pass in a blur. Dad wakes up; I convince him to go home and take a shower now that he knows I’m not dead. I talk to the doctor, who does, in fact, let me keep the bullet—or at least, the shard they pulled from my lung. They give me my phone, and I get a good kick in the feels at all the messages from my friends. There are over a hundred just in the Nerd Herd group chat, plus texts from Abby, Hailey, random band kids, and even Becca Truman—although I have no idea how she got my number.
At 3:05, footsteps trample in the hallway outside like a stampede of buffalo. Alexa, Sophie, Ahmed, and Kevin pile into my room, out of breath. Kevin’s pushing Sophie, with Alexa in her lap, on an old wheelchair I’m pretty sure they stole from the nurses’ station. I’m so excited to see them, I almost rip my body in half from how fast I sit up; I immediately regret this decision when a burst of pain slices through my abdomen. I press my hands to my middle, trying really hard not to shout the F-word at the top of my lungs. When the pain subsides, I soak up my friends, huddled around the foot of my bed. I keep waiting for Jason to walk into the room, but he doesn’t. Something knots in my chest. I guess that fight did royally screw our friendship.
“Oh my God, I am so happy to see you guys.”
Sophie climbs out of the wheelchair and takes my hand—the one without the tube in it. “You have no idea how happy we are to see you. We stopped by on Monday and they wouldn’t let us in.”
It crosses my mind that I should probably be embarrassed of how I look right now. I haven’t showered or brushed my teeth in four days and I literally have a pee tube shoved up my crotch. But I’m so happy to see them, I don’t even care.
“Oh, we brought contraband.” Ahmed dramatically pulls a Game of Thrones coloring book, some colored pencils, a Miyazaki DVD, and a little stuffed alligator out of a Target bag and places them on my side table.
“How did everyone find out what happened?” I ask. “I mean, I’ve been passed out since Monday, so.”
“Jason told us,” Kevin says.
“And I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut when my friends do really cool heroic things.” Alexa picks up the stuffed alligator and chomps Sophie’s arm with it. “If you’re wondering why the whole school knows.”
“How’d you guys get in here?” I croak out, then clear my throat and take another sip of water. “I thought Emma said only two visitors at a time.”
Alexa smirks. “We snuck in.”
“Pretty sure we’ve only got until they see the names on the sign-in sheet,” Sophie adds. “Mike Rotch and family have overtaken this hospital.”
I laugh. “It was totally you guys who pranked Jason at the bagel place. I knew it.”
“Oh, of course,” Alexa says. “Was that even in question?”
I fidget my fingers. “Where is Jason, anyway?” I’m not going to lie, the fact that he’s not here really sucks.
“Detention, all week,” Ahmed says. “For blowing off school on Monday.”
Great, another reason for him to be pissed at me. Although, it’s kind of douchey they won’t excuse him cutting for a pretty valid reason. “Oh. That sucks.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t seen him, though,” Ahmed says. “He’s been here every day.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Really? I just woke up, like, four hours ago.”
“Yep. Every day after school, until they kick him out.”
For some reason, that makes my chest all fluttery. “That’s cool.”
“He and your dad have been having some heart-to-hearts,
I bet.”
There is no part of that sentence that doesn’t make me feel super awkward.
Alexa shrugs. “To be honest, I’m pretty shocked you two aren’t together.”
She doesn’t mean it like a low blow, but it still feels that way. “Well, you know.” I look away. “Being together requires both people actually wanting a relationship. It doesn’t count if it’s just me.”
Everyone shares uncomfortable glances, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve admitted my crush out loud. But when you almost die, it puts things in perspective. I’m going to speak up and say what I really mean from now on.
“So, can we call you Wonder Woman now?” Alexa makes a finger gun. “Bulletproof Ivy to the rescue.”
“I think we need a play-by-play,” Ahmed adds.
Sophie brushes the hair off my face. “You’re basically the town hero now.”
“I am not the town hero.”
“You saved someone’s life,” Ahmed adds. “There’s nothing more heroic than that.”
No one’s said it like that before. “I guess that’s true. But you guys were my accomplices. I couldn’t have made the connection about Liam if we hadn’t done our break-in on Saturday.”
Alexa grins. “This is true. We will accept credit for that.”
“People made fun of us for dressing as superheroes, but now we’re actual superheroes, and no one’s gonna make fun of that.” Kevin flexes his wimpy right biceps. Maybe he’s got a point. Maybe anyone has the potential to be a superhero in the right circumstance. Sometimes it takes saving a life; other times it’s just speaking your truth.
Emma plows into the room with her hands on her hips. “Okay, troublemakers. Out.”
Everyone groans.
“Where did you get this?” She rolls her eyes at the stolen wheelchair. “She’s recovering from a major surgery. Out.”
I stifle a laugh that burns in my throat as we say our goodbyes.
Another hour passes uneventfully, during which I watch the cheesiest possible hookup show on MTV and color in the book my friends brought me.
The Last Confession of Autumn Casterly Page 27