“OK, I’m coming,” he replied, and then returned briefly to his conversation with me. “Think about what I said, OK? Have a good night, Em-Em.”
“I will. And thanks. Drive safely, and you guys have fun.”
“You have fun, my sweet girl.”
I hung up and set the phone back into its charger. My father was acting as though I didn’t allow myself even a second of free time, which wasn’t true. In fact, thinking of how many opportunities Elyas had to annoy me, I probably had too much free time.
I dismissed Elyas’s name from my mind, picked up my book, and started reading again. I had read only twenty pages before someone knocked at the door. I knew who it was, because only one person knocked so persistently. “Alex, what’s so important you can’t just call me?” I said, opening the door. When I had talked to her two hours ago, she had mentioned some “groundbreaking news,” but wouldn’t tell me what it was.
“Sebastian!” Alex yodeled and pushed her way into the room, laden with shopping bags.
“You saw him?” I asked, as she plopped onto my bed and dropped her bags everywhere, immediately filling the room.
“Ye-hes!” she said, bobbing up and down. “He came over last night!”
“Do tell,” I said as I sat next to her.
“He and Elyas were having a beer on the roof. After hemming and hawing and almost going crazy for a half hour, I finally went up there and joined them.” Her grin said that her courage had paid off.
“And?”
“Sebastian smiled when he saw me.”
“See? I told you he liked you. And what happened next?”
“At first they blabbed on about typical boring guy stuff.” She rolled her eyes. “I felt stupid sitting there with them and considered going back inside. But then,” she continued, her eyes twinkling, “Elyas suddenly said good night and went to bed.”
“God, I hope you two used protection,” I moaned, because I didn’t need a good imagination to picture how the rest of the night went.
“Oh, please!” Alex said. “We talked, Emely. What’s wrong with you?”
I frowned. “Talked?”
“Yes, two hours straight,” she said, melting. “He is so great.” She sighed. “There is something so calming about him. Emely, I think I’ve fallen in love.”
That wasn’t exactly news, but I pretended to be surprised.
“Really?”
She beamed and nodded, and looked so adorably happy that nothing could take away from the moment.
Maybe Sebastian marked a new beginning for Alex, and the end of the era of jerks.
“How do you think he feels?” I asked.
Alex tugged at her skirt. “I think he likes me, too. At least, he asked me out to a movie tonight.” Ah, hence the shopping bags—Alex was as transparent as glass. Anyway, she had finally gotten her long-awaited date with Sebastian, and I was happy for her.
“What movie?”
“Oh, I don’t care. Who’s interested in the stupid movie?”
“I’m guessing not you,” I answered, and a smile lit up her face even more. “And now you’ve found the perfect outfit,” I said, looking at her bags, relieved she hadn’t dragged me along with her.
“Exactly, except I desperately need your help. I don’t know which one to wear.” She had hardly finished her sentence before she began laying out the contents of her bags on my bed. I gazed with remorse at my book. I doubted I’d be seeing it again anytime soon.
Alex pulled her top off over her head and had a new one on in a split second. I sighed, leaned back against the wall, and at least tried to help her, though my fashion sense was nonexistent.
Two uninterrupted hours later—which felt like ten—and after umpteen costume changes, Alex had finally settled on a combination she was satisfied with. She still had so much energy, whereas I would have had a nervous breakdown if the whole ordeal had not ended when it did.
“What time does the show start?” I asked.
“Ten thirty,” she replied as though she had all the time in the world.
I looked at my clock. “You get that it’s nine thirty right now, right?” I was puzzled at how relaxed she was because I knew Alex liked to book the bathroom for at least two hours before important events. Getting ready was always a ceremony for her.
“What?” she yelled, leaping up from the bed. “Oh God!” She frantically grabbed her bags and stuffed her clothes back in. I helped her.
“If you hurry, you’ll still make the bus. There’s one that leaves in five minutes.”
“I can do this! I need to do this!” She quickly kissed my cheek and picked up all her bags. “Thanks for your support. I’ll return the favor soon,” she promised, rushing for the door.
“Don’t mention it. I’m crossing my fingers for you and Sebastian.”
“I need all the help I can get,” she said, waving at me and vanishing. The quiet that took over the room enveloped me like a warm bath. I sighed and fell back onto my bed. In some ways, I didn’t think I’d ever understand Alex. I was probably the worst person she could talk to when it came to fashion choices. I had exactly zero understanding of that whole world. People wore clothes so they didn’t have to run around naked. Why the huge drama about it? I liked to pick nice things to wear, just like anyone, but “Do my boobs look perky in this top?” and “Do these shoes match my lipstick?” were not questions I had ever asked or ever would ask.
There were much more important things in life. People who claimed they did the whole fashion thing not for the benefit of others, but strictly for themselves were big hypocrites. If you were the last person on earth, you wouldn’t give much thought to whether your freaking shoes matched your lipstick! And women went to such lengths to please men. It was pathetic. Although I had to admit Alex had a good point when she said, “Men don’t know what they want, so you have to tell them they want you.”
Apart from that, I thought everyone should dress however they wanted. The true art was in finding someone who accepted you as you were. If I never found someone like that, I’d as soon stay single.
Luca didn’t seem to have any problems with my style. And Elyas didn’t, either.
Dammit, there was that name again.
I tried to banish it from my head as fast as it had arrived. I had been thinking about that jerk too much lately, and I had to exercise more control. My book should help me do that. I rolled onto my stomach and got to work. It was a nineteenth-century novella by Theodor Storm, The Dykemaster. It’s about a man in charge of a Dutch dyke who watches his family meet a tragic end, and later the village schoolmaster describes sightings of the dykemaster’s ghost riding the skeleton of a white horse. I was proud I was able to slog through it—until the moment when, exhausted, I shut my eyes.
When I opened them, my palm, now healed, was near my face. Every time I had run into Elyas since the bike crash, he had wanted to check my hand. I couldn’t say I was thrilled. In fact, it was extremely unpleasant. Still, there was no denying he was genuinely interested in how well my wound was healing.
He should have long forgotten about it by now.
Why did he even care?
I took a deep breath.
Oh, and by the way, you’re absolutely my type.
No, I was not! Did I look like a cover model or something? I mean, seriously. But the way he looked at me . . . For the love of God. I buried my head in my pillow. I couldn’t stop the name from going through my head. Elyas, Elyas, Elyas. This was not a good sign.
Logic was telling me it was fatal to waste even a second thinking about him, but I couldn’t turn the thoughts off. I was going crazy.
Elyas was playing a dangerous game with me. How could I be so stupid as to fall for it a second time? When we knew each other in high school, I was naïve and didn’t know any better. There was no excuse this time: it was shee
r stupidity.
My phone rang. I looked at the clock. It was just past midnight. I frowned, got up, and took the phone from its charging cradle. An unknown number was on the screen. I recognized the area code for Neustadt—the town Alex and I had grown up in. I got a bad feeling in my stomach.
“Yes?” I answered.
“Ms. Emely Winter?” said an unfamiliar female voice whose tone was too serious. My throat hurt.
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“Good evening, Ms. Winter. I apologize for the hour. My name is Anna Schmidt, and I’m calling from Neustadt City Hospital.”
Hospital.
Mom. Dad.
Time froze. My thoughts dissolved, leaving only perfect emptiness. I stared into a void as my hand tightened around the phone.
“Ms. Winter, your parents have been in a car accident.”
My throat constricted.
“Wh-what happened to my parents?” I stammered in a voice that sounded like someone else’s.
“Your father will be OK,” the woman said. “He has a broken thigh and three broken ribs.”
OK, Dad would be all right. Though knowing that wasn’t reassuring me. There was an implied but in the woman’s sentence, and I started to tremble as I realized this.
“And . . . Carla . . . ?” I asked.
The woman took a deep breath. “Your mother is currently in surgery. She arrived at the emergency room with severe internal injuries. At the moment I can’t give you any specifics on her condition, but I will call you immediately as soon as there is any news.”
I felt like a heavy metal chain had been wrapped around my body, keeping me from taking in air.
“Can I . . . speak with my father?”
“He’s still in shock and is sedated so he can get some rest, Ms. Winter. Before he fell asleep, he asked me to call you.” Her words sounded so final, as though there was nothing more she could have told me.
“Is . . . my mother . . . Is it very bad?” I asked.
“It’s very hard for me to say because I haven’t spoken with the surgeon, and I don’t want to give you any misinformation. Let me reassure you that the doctors in the operating room are doing everything they possibly can to help her.”
I swallowed, but nothing could ease the dryness in my throat. A thousand questions swirled through my head as an emptiness started to envelop me. I felt numb, but at the same time I felt as though something had hit me, with a thud that echoed in my ears. I slowly sat down at my desk.
“Thank you,” I said, hanging up.
I felt like I was tripping, badly, as though the hospital hadn’t really called. I couldn’t get my mind around what the woman had told me. Her words eddied through my head, but they couldn’t find a way to make sense.
My parents couldn’t have been in an accident; I had just talked to them.
I could hear my mother’s voice saying hello in the background during the call. That was the last time I’d heard her voice.
Mom.
How many times had I put off talking to her and failed to express how much I loved her?
Car accident. The phrase internal injuries echoed, but it sounded like a foreign language. My thoughts were shrouded in a dense fog that had buried everything.
But I grasped one thing: I had to get back to Neustadt. I needed to get home. Now.
Something inside me took over, as though autopilot had switched on and was now in control. In a trance, I swiveled to my laptop, opened the Web browser, and searched for train departure times. My trembling fingers made a few typos, and I lost patience. Why the hell didn’t I have my own car? Once I found and clicked the train schedule I needed, the page seemed to take forever to load. When it finally did, I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. The next train didn’t leave until 5:38 a.m.
I didn’t know how much time I had to get there, but I felt sure—as never before in my life—that I couldn’t wait five more hours to get going. I needed to get to my mother. The idea that she was hurt and I wasn’t with her sent cramps through all the muscles in my gut. I had to get to her. There was no alternative.
Nicolas! I suddenly thought. He had a car. Normally I’d never ask someone to drive me a hundred miles in the middle of the night, but this wasn’t a normal situation. I was already searching for his number when I remembered he’d lost his phone a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t know his landline, if he even had one.
But Eva was with him!
Trembling, I clicked through the contacts, dialed, and waited for Eva to pick up, but all I got was her voicemail.
“Eva, this is Emely . . . My . . . parents . . . They had an accident. Can you call me back as soon as you get this?”
I hung up.
What should I do now? I ran my fingers through my hair and left them at the base of my neck. I felt so totally powerless yet overcome with an urge to do something.
Alex! Exactly. I had to call Alex. She didn’t have a car, but maybe she could come by and . . . I didn’t know what we’d do after she came over. I just needed her.
I paced my room waiting for her to answer, but instead of her voice I got a tinny “The party you are trying to reach is unavail—” I hung up.
“Of all days to have her phone off!” I said, throwing my phone onto the bed. Then I remembered that Alex had been to the movies. Maybe she was home by now but had forgotten to turn her phone back on. I hastily dialed her landline. But the second I heard the idiotic answering machine, my heart sank even further.
“Alex . . . it’s me . . . You’ve got to call me back . . . My parents were in an accident . . . P-please call me back as soon as you get this.” I stammered, dropping the phone again.
I tried to convince myself she’d be home soon. But I wasn’t convincing enough.
God . . . Mom! This couldn’t be happening.
What would I do without her?
No. I couldn’t let myself think that way. I wouldn’t tolerate bullshit like that in my head, not even for a second. But thoughts never asked for permission.
I leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees and sinking my head into them.
The longer I sat there, the deeper and deeper I was drawn into a hole. Images flashed of a wrecked car with my parents inside. They were just lying there, bleeding to death, and I couldn’t be with them.
I didn’t understand how it could have happened. My father was the most careful driver I knew. He never sped. Never!
I imagined my mother in surgery, lying in a sterile white room with dozens of doctors in green surgical gowns standing around her, fighting to save her life.
Not knowing what was going on felt like a monster taking huge bites out of me, and the longer I stayed in that spot on the floor, stuck in my dark thoughts, the more the monster devoured. I was numb and paralyzed, trapped in this little room, as though the walls were closing in on me more and more with each breath, soon to crush me to death.
I spent every second dreading that the phone would ring with the nurse on the line, calling to say there was nothing more they could do. That I had lost my mother forever.
At some point I snapped out of it enough to notice a knock on the door.
Alex, I thought immediately. She must have made it home, listened to her messages, and come over right away. Bracing myself with a hand on the floor and the other on the wall, I heaved myself up. My knees felt weaker than ever before, but I ran to the door. I pictured Alex standing there and could already feel her taking me into her arms. But when I opened the door, all my illusions went up in smoke. It wasn’t Alex.
“Oh, Elyas . . . n-now’s not a good time.” I stammered, trying to close the door again. But Elyas forced the door open.
“Emely,” he said, looking me right in the eyes. “I’m not here to annoy you. I heard your message for Alex, and since Alex
wasn’t home, I came over. Tell me what’s happened.”
“I-I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head.
“You’re trembling and . . . you’re very pale.”
“I . . . maybe . . . what . . .”
“Let’s sit down first,” Elyas said, taking hold of my wrist to steady me. He guided me to the bed, sat me carefully on the edge, and squatted down in front of me. “OK, what’s happened, Emely? Your parents were in an accident?”
I nodded.
“Did you get a call from the hospital? How do you know this?”
I nodded again, on autopilot.
“What did they say?”
“That . . . that there was a car accident,” I answered. “But I don’t know how that can be true. My father never speeds. Never.”
Elyas looked at me, and then he tried to smile. “He’s not like me, huh?”
No, my father was the opposite of him.
“OK, tell me what they said.”
“My dad . . . he broke his leg, but my mom—” I stopped and shook my head.
“What happened to your mother?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged as tears welled up in my eyes. “She’s in surgery . . . because . . . they said she has severe internal injuries . . . They didn’t know any more than that.” I tried to beat back the sobs. “Internal injuries are bad, Elyas, right?”
He looked at the floor before looking back into my eyes. “It depends.”
“She’s not going to survive, is she?” I started trembling harder, and Elyas took my hands and held them in his.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Emely,” he said. “Just because she has internal injuries, even severe ones, doesn’t mean she will die.”
Die. He had said the word die. Everything around me melted together through the tears in my eyes.
“We have no idea what kind of injuries she has,” he said softly, stroking my hand. “And if Carla is even half as stubborn as you are, she’ll get through this.”
I didn’t know why, but everything inside me suddenly collapsed. A single tear became rivers, and before I knew it I pulled my hands out of his and hid my face.
“Emely-Bemely,” Elyas whispered.
Cherry Red Summer (Emely and Elyas Book 1) Page 17