by Ann Hunter
Just when she had decided she officially hated shopping, a dark shop with pulsing music thriving from inside strangely beckoned her. She glanced at Laura who grinned like she won the lottery.
“I always wondered if you’d like this place.” She nudged Alex forward. “Go on.”
Alex looked up at the name of the store written in jagged red letters. T-shirts with the latest, most popular TV characters hung across the ceiling, and piled on shelves. She stepped inside and was hit at once with the faint aroma of incense.
Everything was black leather, silver chains, and colorful character tees. She found a cuff bracelet with a Celtic knot on it, and sort of fell in love. There really wasn’t a beginning or end to it, and it soothed Alex in a way, reminding her of her own rebirth from street rat to something better.
“I think I know what I’m getting you for Christmas,” Laura whispered beside her.
Alex put it back quickly, feigning disinterest.
Laura giggled. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to like stuff.” She bumped her hip into Alex’s playfully. “You’re allowed to like shopping, too.”
Alex rolled her eyes and moved off to the t-shirts. Laura followed her. “I bet I could get you anything in this store, and you’d be stoked.”
Alex hated when other people were right. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Can we go to lunch now? That sub shop at the food court looked good.”
Laura blew a raspberry. “That slop? Mom gave me her debit card for lunch. We’re gonna go some place decent.”
“What about shopping?”
Laura admired some earrings and shrugged. “I think we’re both over it. Besides…” she looked at Alex. “Santa Clause won’t like it if you’re around when I tell him what to get you.”
Alex blinked in confusion. “Santa doesn’t exist.”
Laura’s eyes went wide. “What the? Of course he exists.”
“No he doesn’t.”
“Alex, I saw him downstairs.”
“The guy in the fake beard, and fat, red body suit?” Alex’s brow knit.
Laura gripped her purse strap. “He had elves.”
Like elves proved her point any better. Alex stared at her. How could anyone older than eight still believe in Santa? “I seriously can’t tell if you’re shizzing me right now.”
Laura’s jaw dropped. She grabbed Alex’s sleeve and tugged her away. “We’re going to lunch.”
“Finally!”
As Alex buckled her seatbelt in the car, she shook her head. “I still can’t believe you think Santa is real.”
Laura’s knuckles went pasty over the steering wheel. “Elves.”
She reversed the car and then put it into drive. They traveled to a country road that Laura said would get them to the restaurant faster.
“The elves are make believe too,” Alex said. She thought Laura was going a little too fast.
Laura looked at her. “How can you say that? Alex, Santa and his elves are the meaning of Christmas.”
Alex grabbed the car door. Definitely too fast. “How can you say that? I thought you were all God is the reason for everything. You and all your— look out!”
Laura slammed her foot on the break and the car spun like a top. Alex grit her teeth as another car sped toward them, ramming into the edge of the front fender.
Laura tried to get the car back under control, cranking the wheel. They bashed into a speed limit sign. Glass shattered. Alex braced her arms over her face. Her head smacked against the window. That was the last thing she remembered.
BLACK ICE
Gray, hazy smoke circled around Alex. She winced at the stinging in her face, and glimpsed into the cracked rearview mirror. Blood and scratches hatch marked across her arm and cheeks.
A sound hissed past her door. She blinked, realizing the world was upside down. The car must have flipped over. Her seatbelt cut against her, holding her in place. She beat back the airbags. The smoke wafting through the vents got thicker and darker.
Alex reached out to brace against the dashboard as she undid her belt, smacking her already sore cheek while crumpling into a heap.
She crouched on the ceiling, and reached for Laura.
“You okay?”
Laura’s face was buried in the steering wheel airbag. Alex shook her shoulder. “Hey.”
She peeled back the edge of the white material and found blood slashed across it. Alex inhaled sharply. “Laura?”
She pushed back a drape of hair from Laura’s face and gulped. Blood streamed from her temple.
The smoke grew thicker. Alex coughed. Her eyes watered. The smoke billowed in through the broken windshield now, turning black, before waves of bright orange formed within it from the hood of the car.
Alex bit her lip, mentally swearing. She shook Laura’s shoulder again. “Hey. Wake up.”
The fire leapt to life, inching toward them. Alex’s heart pounded like it had in the store. She reached for Laura’s buckle, trying to undo it, but it was stuck. She jiggled it, then wrestled it, but the button wouldn’t engage.
“Dammit.” She tried again, yanking as hard as she could. The flames spread across the hood of the car. They crackled, then roared. Alex started hacking, her lungs flooded by the smoke.
She reached across Laura to try and open the door, but it wouldn’t budge either. “Come on!”
Alex scuttled back to her side, but the door jammed. She thought she could fit through the broken glass and try the door from the outside.
The heat of the flames was intense, roaring in her ears like the sound of blood pumping through your ears in the still of night. She bit her lip again when she cut her hand on glass. Alex raced to Laura’s door, grasping the handle. It scorched from the heat of the approaching fire. Alex hollered as she lifted and pulled, mentally blocking out the pain.
She pounded her fist on the glass, yelling, “Laura. Laura!”
Alex spun on her heel, looking for something to break the glass with. The people in the other car that had hit them stood outside, on their phones. She hoped they were calling for help.
Alex wriggled back into the car, shards of glass once again biting into her. She slid between Laura and the steering wheel and began slamming her foot against the window. It was the only way out now. The fire was too close.
Once. Twice. Three times.
She yelled again in frustration, gripping the steering wheel to keep herself steady on it. She patted Laura’s face firmly. “Stay with me.”
Alex wheezed and used all of her weight to force her foot through the glass window. She cried out as pieces cut into her pant leg. Planting her foot against the part of the window that had been freed of glass, she kicked the rest of the window out and leapt out.
She turned and reached back in, trying to free Laura from her seat belt, pulling it around her body. She ground her teeth as she worked, ignoring the sweat dripping into her eyes and blurring her vision.
Laura began to slip from beneath the belt as Alex hauled hard on her. She linked her arms under Laura’s and pulled with all her might.
Alex barely registered sirens wailing toward them. She dragged Laura far away from the car and eased her to the ground, gasping for breath with a hacking cough. She leaned over her, searching her bloodied face. “Stay with me Fruit Loop, stay with me.”
Paramedics shoved her aside and pressed an oxygen mask over Laura’s face.
“What’s her name?”
Alex, dazed, answered. “Laura Showman.”
They asked more questions, and Alex hoped, in her confusion and the subsiding adrenaline, that she answered it all right. For a moment, she felt invisible.
They lifted Laura on to a board with a neck brace, and settled her on a gurney in the ambulance. Alex scrambled to follow, but one of the paramedics pushed her aside.
“Family only.”
“Please. I—”
They began to shut the ambulance door, giving an obligatory “Sorry, kid.”
But just as it n
early shut, one of the other paramedics shoved it back open and waved her in. Alex pulled herself up and settled into a seat, eyes fixed on Laura.
“You’re pretty banged up,” said the one who had held the door. He began picking through his kit to patch her up. Alex pulled away from him, nodding her head to Laura.
“Worry about her.” Alex hugged herself, shivering. She wasn’t even cold. “I’ll be fine.”
The ambulance screamed into the emergency section of the hospital and took Laura in. Alex rushed to keep up. She struggled to process the information that the paramedics rattled off to nurses and doctors.
“Sixteen, female. Head trauma. Multiple lacerations. Blood pressure dropping. Car accident on the old highway, they hit black ice.”
Alex couldn’t help feeling responsible. If she had just let the Santa thing go, Laura wouldn’t have been distracted. She wouldn’t have made Laura upset, wouldn’t have made her speed. She shouldn’t have been so mean to her, so grumpy.
The emergency team stopped her in the hallway, telling her she couldn’t follow past the swinging beige doors. Other nurses and employees bustled past. She stared through the window in the door as the crew in green scrubs grew smaller, wheeling Laura away through another set of doors.
Alex was alone.
Someone bumped her hard in the shoulder. She staggered and gripped her arm. Alone and invisible.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. Forever, she guessed. Alex was numb when she was led into a hospital room and seated on a bed. She still didn’t even register the sting of antiseptic on her cuts and burns. What would Cade and Hillary think? Hillary had trusted her, and now their kid was probably being wheeled back for a heart replacement or something. They’d never forgive Alex.
She didn’t know if she could take them not forgiving her. Especially Hillary. Not when she was finally, like, giving Alex stuff. Trusting her with more. If Alex couldn’t even handle shopping, how would she ever handle being part of the family? And what kind of family would it be without Laura?
Alex winced back tears, and sniffed sharply.
“Sorry,” said a woman.
The kind word brought Alex back down to earth. She recognized a gentle, smiling face that looked like an older version of her best friend Carol. They had met once, last summer.
Alex tried to read the name on the badge dangling from the dark blue pocket of the woman’s scrubs. Char… lotte.
Her eyes traveled up. “Are you Carol’s mom?”
Charlotte nodded. “I was on my break when I saw you come in and requested to be put on your shift.” She smiled at Alex. “I’m going to take good care of you girls, don’t you worry.”
Just when she finished patching Alex up, Laura was wheeled in. Alex hopped off the bed, and pushed past the doctors as soon as they would let her.
Laura had stitches in her forehead, banded together by small, white tapes. A foam neck brace wrapped beneath her chin, and an IV was planted into her hand. Not a heart replacement, but no small thing either. Alex’s eyes squeezed shut, imagining Hillary turning purple with rage. How dare Alex fail like this.
Charlotte buzzed around Laura’s hospital bed, writing down vitals and making sure everything was set right on the liquid-filled bags leading to the IV. She clicked the end of the pen and pushed it into the metal part of the clip board. “Your parents should be here soon. Why don’t you rest?”
Alex folded her arms, staring at Laura. Was there anything Alex could do to fix it? Before the Showmans sent her back to Haven or something. Oh, God, not there. She shuddered.
Charlotte pressed a paper cup to Alex’s fingers. “Drink this.”
Alex glanced down at the orange liquid inside. “No thanks.”
Charlotte cleared her throat. “It wasn’t a suggestion.”
“I don’t like orange juice.”
Worry etched across Charlotte’s face. “Your face is pale and you’re shaking. You need to drink it.”
Alex sighed. Shaking hands, yeah right. She was fine. But when she grasped the cup, it rattled in her hands. The juice sloshed inside until she got it to her lips. She wrinkled her nose at the sweet acidity.
“Low blood sugar,” Charlotte said. She made Alex sit on the other bed in the room. “You’re probably still in shock.”
Charlotte mounted her stethoscope into her ears and lifted the metal end. “May I?”
Alex glanced down at her own chest, she grimaced as the cold metal pressed against her skin. Charlotte listened to her heart for a minute, looking at the watch on her wrist. She nodded. “Shock.”
She took the empty cup from Alex’s hand and helped her lie down before making her comfortable, legs elevated over pillows, blanketed beneath sheets not as soft Alex’s bed at the Showmans’. She hoped she’d be going home to it. Would they still want her there after this? She was such a giant mess inside. She rubbed her face carefully, jerking when she accidentally nudged one of the bandaids from its place.
The pain would never be as harsh as anything Cade and Hillary could do to her. But here she was thinking the worst again. She convinced herself she could handle being yelled at for whatever. So long as they still wanted her.
Alex glanced to Laura. “Is she gonna be okay?”
Before Charlotte could answer, Hillary and Cade burst through the door, hustling to Laura’s side, breathless.
Hillary took Laura’s hand into her own and freckled it with kisses, while Cade stroked his daughter’s forehead. He looked over his shoulder toward the door.
“Where’s the doctor?”
Charlotte draped her stethescope over her neck and headed out. “I’ll go get him.”
Alex watched them talk quietly between eachother. Hillary was teary eyed, and Alex had never seen that much concern on Cade’s face before.
She’s so lucky. Alex stared at the Showmans’ backs, wondering when they would turn around and notice her. But it was like ice in the room. A sinking feeling in her chest made her sure she was entirely invisible now. She wondered if she really did exist, but swallowed and pushed the thought away. They had been good to her all this time. They’d turn around any minute. Wouldn’t they?
They turned when the doctor entered, but their eyes were glued to him.
Don’t mind me, Alex thought, but was really aching inside for TV with Cade right now, or that one time Hillary mama-bear hugged her after Alex kicked Brad Hopkins’s ass.
Normally Alex didn’t like being touched, but right now she wanted nothing more than just to be held and reassured that she was still part of this family.
Alex sat up and listened.
“The head trauma was significant, Mister and Missus Showman. We don’t know what sort of damage has been done. She’s stable for now, but I can’t tell you when she’ll wake up.”
Hillary leaned against Cade and wept on his shoulder.
Cade held her, his voice shook. “What happened exactly?”
Alex wanted to scream, ‘I’d tell you if you’d just look at me!’
“They hit black ice. The car caught fire. Someone pulled her out.” The doctor grasped Cade’s shoulder apologetically. “That’s all I know.”
He left the room and Cade guided Hillary back to Laura’s bedside. Alex wished they’d notice her. Say something to her. Yell at her even. Why was she invisible? She willed them to see her.
Cade turned and locked eyes with Alex. His typical greeting of ‘Hey sport’ echoed in her head, but this time he was silent. He crossed to her and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tightly.
Alex wanted nothing more than to sag in his embrace, to let her emotions release in a wave of relief. But she tucked her lip instead and bit it, resisting the urge to cry.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he whispered.
But I’m not. Alex gripped his elbow, and eased away from him. If she had the words to say it, she’d tell him her insides were as messed up as Laura’s outsides; bleeding, bruised, and broken.
He stayed with
her a moment longer before returning to his wife. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “We should get Alex home.”
Hillary shook her head, gripping Laura’s hand. “No. She needs me.”
Cade kissed her again. “There’s nothing we can do. They’ll call us if anything happens.”
Hillary’s voice was thick with anguish. “I don’t want them to call me. I want to be here, with my daughter.”
Alex’s shoulders rose to her ears. Hillary saying ‘with my daughter’ made Alex feel like she wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t worthy anymore. Her fingers curled around the hospital blanket, like digging into the fabric would somehow keep her life from shattering. The crinkled folds would stay together.
Cade sighed and hugged Hillary. He let her go and turned back to Alex. “Let’s go home. I’ll get you some dinner.”
Alex shook her head. “I want to stay with Laura.” Out of guilt for causing the accident? Out of wanting Hillary to see that she was there too? Whatever the reason, Alex had to show them, especially Hillary, that she wanted to be part of this family.
She stared wordlessly at Hillary who remained silent.
Cade ran his hands through is hair, grumbling, “Stubborn girls.” He paced. “So we’re all just here, are we?” He started digging through his pocket when no one answered. “I’m getting coffee. Sounds like it’s going to be a long night.”
Alex hopped off the bed, reaching for the coins. “I’ll do it.”
He blinked at her, confused for a moment, then squeezed her shoulder. “Alright.”
Alex thought she almost saw him smile as he poured the clinking change into her hand. At least Cade was still on her side.
TEARS ON SNOW
Going for coffee turned into wandering the corridor. Alex really wasn’t even sure where to find a cup of joe. She was glad to escape the room for a minute and think. Sinking into a chair around the corner, she dropped her head in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut.