by Hannah Jayne
“It wasn’t just a regular sedan kind of car that hit her, was it? It was the blue one. The one that Tim was driving?”
“Tim?” JD looked surprised.
Riley shook her head and looked imploringly at JD.
He swallowed hard, pausing for a beat. “The witnesses say the sedan was circling the school. It started to follow Shelby.”
Riley nodded, numbness creeping into her finger and toes.
“It sped up when she entered the crosswalk.”
Riley’s stomach folded in on itself and she thought she was going to be sick again. “Sped up?”
“He hit her once…” JD’s voice trailed off and Riley’s heartbeat sped up. “She fell; she hit the road.” He cleared his throat. “And then he backed over her.”
Riley felt the bile burning at the back of her throat. Her vision was suddenly blurry, and the windshield, the dashboard in front of her—everything—disappeared behind her tears.
“They said he was gearing up to do it again, but he must have realized he’d be penned in if he went that direction. He turned around and sped off.”
Riley folded over, pressing her head between her knees. “Oh God.”
“It was all really quick.”
Riley popped back up. “But there were witnesses. And it takes time to put a car in reverse. Why didn’t someone help her? Why didn’t someone stop him?”
The night broke, and a smatter of rain hit the hood of the car. The drops on the windshield cast a mottled shadow over JD’s face when Riley turned to look at him.
“I don’t know, Riley.”
Panic tightened her chest.
Her fault.
“Someone must have gotten a license plate, right? Or someone filmed it or took a picture?”
JD shook his head. “There wasn’t a license plate on the car. And apparently it was the one time people were too stunned to pull out their phones. Other than the one shot that was on the news, there aren’t any pictures of the car. And none of the driver.”
Riley cried silently the rest of the way to the hospital. When JD pulled into a spot and dropped the car into park, she couldn’t cry anymore.
They rode the elevator to the sixth floor, silent the whole time. Riley absently wondered if her parents knew she was missing, or if Hempstead and Gail the super sleuth had yet realized they’d been outsmarted by a seventeen-year-old girl.
They should have been protecting Shelby, Riley thought grimly. Although if it wasn’t for her, her best friend wouldn’t have needed protecting. Riley tried to swallow down the thought.
The doors opened on the sixth floor, and Shelby’s whole family was crowded there. Worry and lack of sleep had carved deep grooves in Mrs. Webber’s face. She bobbed one of the twins on her hip, gripping him with one hand, using the other to blot out the tears that seemed to leak from her eyes.
“Oh, Riley,” Mrs. Webber said, handing off the toddler to another one of Shelby’s siblings. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
She gathered Riley into a tight hug, pulling Riley against her chest until she was crushed against Mrs. Webber’s T-shirt, smelling the comforting Webber house smells of crayons, tomato sauce, and cleaning products. The woman’s body shuddered against Riley’s, and Riley linked her hands over Mrs. Webber’s back.
“I’m so sorry,” Riley whispered.
Mrs. Webber broke the hug and stepped back, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Her eyes went to JD, standing quietly behind Riley. “I don’t believe I know your friend.”
Riley introduced them without making eye contact. “Is Shelby going to be OK? Can I see her?”
“Tru’s in there now and Lily and George.”
Riley thought of George Webber, a big looming brute of a man who wore a salt-and-pepper beard and called his daughter “my Shelby.” A sob lodged in Riley’s throat.
“I can wait.”
“She’s not family,” Shelby’s oldest sister said.
Mrs. Webber reached out and squeezed Riley’s hand. “Yes, she is, Sara.”
Sara’s dark eyes seemed to focus on Riley and then narrow accusingly. Blood pulsed in Riley’s temples, and she took a few stumbling steps backward, sure that Sara knew that the blue sedan—and this hospital—was meant for Riley and not Shelby.
“We’ll just have a seat,” JD said, threading his arm through Riley’s and pulling her into one of the hospital’s hard waiting room chairs.
“She’s going to be OK,” JD repeated, this time murmuring it into Riley’s hair. His closeness—or maybe their distance from Shelby’s family—seemed to break Riley’s trance, and she suddenly dropped her face in her hands.
“I can’t believe this. It’s supposed to be me.”
“No, Riley, it’s not. It shouldn’t have been anyone.”
Riley heaved a sob. “But it’s my fault.”
“No, it’s the guy in the blue sedan’s fault.” He rambled on. “So what were you doing before I picked you up?”
Riley knew it was JD’s attempt at getting her mind off Shelby; it was something that her mother did when Riley had a panic attack: try to veer her off the subject of her panic.
Riley swallowed. “Um, I was—I was not packing my clothes.”
“Well, that’s good, considering you just moved into that house.”
Riley nodded. “I know, but the FBI—”
JD’s eyebrows went up and Riley stopped. What did people who were being forced to disappear say to their friends? I was getting my things together because I’m going to be Greta VonSomething from Poughkeepsie, New York?
Riley just shook her head. “It’s nothing. Do you think we can see Shelby now?” She was out of her seat and moving toward the door when she came face to face with Tru.
Tru was Shelby’s older sister and everything Shelby was not: tall, lanky, and oozing confidence. Her eyes flicked over Riley then went directly to JD.
“You came!” The waft of cold air that shot by Riley as Tru did sent goose bumps all over Riley’s body. Tru threw her arms around JD’s neck and hugged him close. Riley watched as JD’s hands flailed for a half second before wrapping around Tru. She buried her head in his neck and JD drove his fingers through her long blond hair. Something stabbed at Riley. A tiny lick of anger started low in her belly.
Was she jealous?
Mrs. Webber poked her head in. “Ry, you can come see Shelby now.”
Riley licked her lips and tried to breathe deeply as her hand turned on the knob to Shelby’s hospital room. She opened the door, hit immediately with the smell of antiseptic and hospital-clean, her eyes adjusting to the dim light in the room.
“Shelby?” she whispered.
Her feet were planted just inside the doorway, and she jumped when Shelby’s door snapped closed. Riley felt unable to move her feet forward. She felt smothered by the sterility of the room, like she had no right to be there, no right to grieve for her friend.
“Shel?” she asked again, this time taking a step, moving herself forward enough to peek around the curtain half-drawn around Shelby’s bed.
Riley’s heart dropped.
She shoved the curtain aside and raced to Shelby’s bedside, trying to find some semblance of her best friend under the tubes and bandages and measures and beeps of the hospital equipment.
Shelby’s face was almost completely covered in a thick layer of gauze. Its edges were tinged with rust-colored blood, dried against her skin. What wasn’t covered was bulbous and ruined, scratches, bruises, and cuts made glossy by some kind of ointment. A ventilator tube was taped to her mouth and something else to her chest; tubes were held to Shelby’s arm by thick needles. One was an IV; the other seemed to be feeding her blood. The blankets were tucked tightly around her torso, her one leg protruding, encased in an enormous cast, propped up by some kind of sling.
Riley felt the tears prick behind her eyes. Shelby’s toes poked out of the cast, the ladybug pedicure that Riley had given her during their last sleepover badly chipped.
“I’m so sorry, Shelby,” Riley said softly, her hand finding Shelby’s among the bandages and tubes. “This is all my fault.”
Riley gave Shelby’s hand a gentle squeeze, trying not to focus on how limp and lifeless it seemed. “I never thought—if I had listened to you, none of this would’ve ever happened. You wouldn’t be here.” A tear rolled off the end of Riley’s nose. “And now they want me to move.”
The machine that monitored Shelby’s heart beat along steadily, neither Riley’s touch nor words making any difference.
“They’re trying to make me leave,” Riley continued, squeezing Shelby’s hand again delicately, “but I’m not going to. I can’t. Not with you like this.” Riley sniffled, hoping to find her best friend somewhere underneath all this damage. “We’re going to catch the guy who did this to you, Shelby, I promise you that. But you have to promise me something too. You have to promise to get better.” Riley’s voice cracked, but she went on. “Promise me. We’re supposed to go to college together and share a dorm room.”
In the back of her mind, Riley saw her parents sitting on either side of her, Deputy Hempstead explaining Riley’s “new life.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Riley swore. “No matter what happens. But you can’t leave me either. You just can’t. You’re my best friend, Shelby. Please, please wake up. I need you. I need you and I’m so, so sorry. I hope you can hear me.”
She sat down in the chair next to Shelby’s bed and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly. “I’m staying here with you, Shelby, because you’re going to be OK. It’s kind of like one of our normal sleepovers, right?” She forced herself to smile. “Except this time you get the bed.”
Riley rested her cheek on her knees, the steady beep of Shelby’s heart lulling her to sleep, until the blaze of her cell phone cut through the relative calm of the room. She checked the readout: Dad’s Cell. Her heart thudded as she sent the call to voicemail.
“I’m not going to disappear with them,” Riley said, standing up and looking over Shelby again. “I’m not Jane Elizabeth. I’m Riley Spencer, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Riley pulled the chair up against Shelby’s bed and curled up in it, holding Shelby’s hand until she fell asleep.
• • •
“Riley, Riley.” Someone was jiggling her shoulder, and a flood of sunlight was stinging her eyes.
“What time is it?”
“It’s six a.m.”
Riley blinked and sat up, every muscle in her body aching. She blinked, the room—and her wake-up call—coming into focus.
“Mrs. Webber?”
She smiled thinly. “I came back in last night and you had fallen asleep. I didn’t want to wake you. I think Shelby liked that you were here.”
Shelby.
Riley jumped to her feet, the blanket Mrs. Webber must have pulled over her pooling on the ground. “Shelby?” Riley leaned over her friend’s bed, her heart breaking all over again as she saw Shelby in the light now, the cuts and bruises looking more menacing, more devastating. “Did she—did she wake up?”
Mrs. Webber put a hand on Riley’s shoulder. “No, honey, not yet.”
Riley sucked in a sob.
“Why don’t you and your friend go home now? You need to get ready for school. And please thank your parents for letting you stay here with Shelby last night. I tried to call but I must have the number to the old house. It kept saying it was disconnected.”
Riley nodded, unable to speak. She kissed Shelby’s hand and silently wished for her to wake up then hugged Mrs. Webber and stepped out into the hall. It was bustling and busy now, nurses race-walking past her, pushing carts and wheeling around IV bags.
Riley’s mind raced. She’d have to get home. She pulled out her cell phone and her stomach dropped as the missed call register filled up her entire screen:
MISSED CALL: DAD CELL
MISSED CALL: HOME
MISSED CALL: DAD CELL
MISSED CALL: DAD CELL
It went on like that, until the very bottom of the screen. Back to back calls, just a few minutes apart.
“Let me guess: your boyfriend wants to know where you were last night?”
Riley’s head snapped up. “JD! What are you doing here? Did you come back?”
He yawned and Riley noticed his rumpled hair, last night’s clothes wrinkled.
“You stayed here last night too?”
“What did you think? That I was going to dump you here and then just leave you?”
Riley’s surprise obviously amused JD, because a bright smile cracked across his face.
“I don’t know—I guess.”
JD just shook his head, his tone softening. “So how is she? Any change?”
Riley swallowed and saw Shelby’s broken body in her mind’s eye. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get that image out of her head. “Bad. No change.”
“Do you want to stay here? I could go by your house and pick up some clothes for you or something.”
Riley thought of JD driving up to her house, her parents, Gail, Hempstead, and whatever SWAT team he had hired pulling out their guns and throwing JD to the ground. “No, no, you’d better not.”
She pulled her phone from her pocket and wiggled it, showing off the screen full of missed calls and messages. “I think I need to get home.”
“I’m going to get a drink of water. Call and let them know we’re on our way.”
JD disappeared down the hall and Riley stared at her phone. She had never been frightened to call her parents ever before, but suddenly, she was paralyzed—and angry. If she went home, she’d be boxed up, stamped with a new name, and sent to God-knows-where. She’d never know when—or if—Shelby woke up.
“So, they call out the National Guard?”
Riley’s stomach dropped. “What?”
JD strolled up behind her and glanced down at her phone. “Your parents.”
“Of course they didn’t call out the National Guard. They wouldn’t do that. They’re just regular. We’re just regular people. Why”—Riley worried her bottom lip and dropped her voice to a low whisper—“why would you say that?”
JD looked around suspiciously then lowered his voice too. “Because I thought it’d be funny. Note to self: National Guard joke? Epic fail.”
Relief—cold and sticky—crashed over Riley, and her heart started to thump at a normal pace again. “Right.” She forced a laugh that was both too long and too loud. “Right. National Guard. That was funny.”
JD’s smile was quizzical. “OK…so, home?”
“Uh, no, actually.” Riley held up her phone again as though it were definitive proof. “I called my parents. They’re fine, you know, because I checked in. They just want me to help Shelby out.”
JD shifted his weight. “OK, so are you going to stay here?”
Mrs. Webber poked her head around the corner. “Riley, why don’t you and JD go out for a little bit? Maybe grab some sandwiches?”
Riley’s stomach rumbled. She realized that since the few bites of half-solid spaghetti she had the previous night, she hadn’t eaten. “Are you sure? We could just grab something at the cafeteria.”
“I’m sure. It’s not healthy to stay cooped up in here.” She looked over her shoulder, her eyes traveling toward Shelby’s room.
“Sure, Mrs. Webber.”
FOURTEEN
JD leaned against the far wall in the elevator as they coasted downward. He looked Riley up and down. Her cheeks burned. “What?”
He shrugged. “I’m just surprised you don’t have a problem with elevators.”
Riley tried to look nonchalant. I
t wasn’t that she didn’t have a problem with elevators—it was that she had learned to control it. She remembered her mother’s hand closing over hers.
“Come on, Riley. You and me, together.”
Riley stared down at the threshold where the industrial gray carpet met the silver thread of the elevator doors’ track. Her mother gave her arm a little tug and looked down at Riley—four or five years old then—her eyes soft and encouraging. Riley sucked in a deep breath and willed her right foot forward. She stared down at her glossy Mary Jane shoe on the floor of the elevator. And then the doors started to close. Panic rose and exploded across her chest, each finger of fear reaching out to pinch the air in her lungs. Her head throbbed and her eyes watered and her mother seemed so, so far away. Riley’s hand was still in hers but the door was cutting through them, shoving Riley into a square metal coffin, tearing her mother away from her. Locking her away. She could feel the walls coming closer, could feel the cool metal brushing against her shoulders.
“No!”
Riley snapped out of the memory—the daymare—and offered JD a tight-lipped smile. She laced her fingers and gripped her hands tightly, watching the lighted numbers on the elevator door click on and off until they reached the ground floor. Only then was Riley able to breathe.
“OK,” JD said when they stepped out of the elevator. “Where to?”
Riley opened her mouth and then closed it quickly. She squinted through the glass double doors of the hospital. Heat pricked at the back of her neck.
Deputy Hempstead was cutting a direct line to the front desk, something pinched between his forefinger and thumb.
Riley’s heart dropped into her shoes when the light caught it. He was carrying her sophomore picture, now jabbing at it as he barked at the woman at the desk.
Riley’s hand clamped around JD’s. She gave him a hard yank back, the pair disappearing down a hall.
JD paled. “Was that the guy from the train station? Ry, what the hell is going on?”
“Something bad, JD.”
“Then we need to call the police. And I should take you home, right now.”