by Liane Shaw
“If that had happened, it would have been terrible. Beyond.” She shudders a little.
Right after it happened, I thought the terrible thing was that I didn’t drown. That I had to stay here and keep fighting endless battles until I figured out another way to escape.
“For a while I hated Ryan for ruining my life by making me have to keep living it.” I surprise myself by saying the words out loud to her.
“But you don’t feel that way now, do you?” Clare looks so worried that I want to reach into the screen and give her a hug.
“No, I don’t. But I’m still not sure how to be strong enough to deal with everything.”
“You’re one of the strongest people I know. You have to be brave just to get through each day. Lucas and Caleb both think you’re a tough kid. They’ve told me that lots of times.”
“Really? That’s actually really cool coming from two guys who are older and definitely wiser than I am.”
“And I don’t see why Benjamin would think of you as weak.”
“I just feel like now he sees me as someone with problems, you know? Someone he wants to help. I don’t want to be that. I want to be someone he just wants to be with.”
“All you can do is talk to him.”
“I’m afraid I might have done too much of that already.”
“How did he seem?”
“What do you mean?”
“After you told him? Did he seem different with you? Did he run away screaming?” I laugh at her.
“No. Actually, he said he was proud of me. That I could talk to him anytime. I just hope that doesn’t mean he wants to be my therapist instead of my friend.” Instead of my boyfriend.
“Look at us. We talk all the time, but I’m your friend, right? Not your therapist. I know this because you don’t pay me anything, and real therapists make a shitload.” She grins, and I smile back.
“I guess you’re right. I just panicked.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to do that. Liking someone makes you nuts sometimes. Most of the time.”
“Does Ryan make you nuts?”
“Definitely. He’s so cute and nice and funny, but talking to him is like trying to talk to a wall sometimes. It’s hard enough to be in a long-distance relationship. It would be nice if he was more open. Like you.”
“Don’t say that to him. He’d tell me to stop talking to you.”
“Seeing as he isn’t the boss of who I talk to, that would not be a problem.”
“Maybe it will be easier for you next year when he moves to Bainesville.”
“I hope so. A year in the same city would be nice. Assuming he gets in. Did you get your acceptance letter yet?”
“No, but it should be soon. They said it would come by the end of March.”
“Well, I have my fingers crossed. It would be fun to have both of you here.”
“Yeah, then I wouldn’t have to bug you online at seven in the morning. I could just come to your house and bug you in person.”
“That would be great. We could do breakfast.”
“Speaking of which, my mom is downstairs cooking for me. I’d better go. Thanks so much, Clare.”
“Anytime. If you see that boyfriend of mine, give him a kiss from me.”
“That would scare the shit out of him!” She lights up the screen with a huge smile.
“Make sure you have your phone ready. I want a selfie,” she says as her face fades from sight.
I’m laughing as I head down the hall toward the smell of pancakes.
thirteen
“Come on, it’s right up here! I can’t believe you’ve never done this before!” Benjamin calls back over his shoulder, his neck twisted around so that he can see me. I want to scream at him to watch where he’s going, tell him that I don’t want him to get hurt, but I don’t want to sound pushy or pathetic, so I just smile and try to get my pedals turning faster so that I can keep up. I can believe I’ve never done this before. This is some distance away from being fun. My thighs are screaming at me to slow down and coast a while. My eyes and mouth are full of sand because Benjamin thinks that biking down a steep dirt road is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever done on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
I grind my teeth into a smile, making a lovely crunching sound as the sand works its way into my molars, and I put everything I have into getting closer to him…literally and figuratively. Or is it still literally when you mean emotional closeness? A better question would be, why am I thinking about vocabulary when I’m heading down a ninety-degree slope on a bike that I’ve never ridden before, which probably has some sort of brake mechanism somewhere, but in this moment I have no idea where that might be. I’m going to kill myself.
Now that’s something I never say out loud. Especially if Ryan’s around.
And now I’m thinking about Ryan. Meanwhile, Benjamin is almost out of sight. I can hear him whooping and laughing as he whips down the hill. I’m not sure, but it looks like he’s taken both feet off the pedals, sticking them out to the side. I’m even less sure of this, but it almost looks like he’s got his hands in the air as well. The guy is crazy. Gorgeous, funny, outrageous, and crazy!
I still can’t believe we’re actually here, together. After I basically vomited out all of my personal garbage onto him at the bridge, I was terrified he’d either start avoiding me or decide that he had to join Ryan’s team of Jack’s bodyguards. But he just kept being Benjamin. Walking home from school with me, eating fries at the Supe, with my mom being so nice to both of us that I almost had to tell her to stop. We even went down to the bridge a few more times and managed to just enjoy the view without any more true confessions to mess up the morning.
And now we’re here. He invited me to come on a weekend bike ride, which according to Clare is an actual date. Of course, she only knows what I tell her, so I might have skewed the situation in my favor a bit when I told her about it. But it doesn’t matter anyhow because right now all I can do is pray that I don’t fall off and ruin whatever this is before we even get it started.
I grip the handles so tightly that my knuckles shine through my skin and my fingers start to cramp up. I’m hunched way down over the handlebars with my head bent up at an uncomfortable angle so I can still see. Every inch of me is uncomfortable, but this is still the best day of my life. It’s just me and Benjamin in the sunshine, and any minute now I’m actually going to be close enough to see him.
I hear a rumbling behind me and realize that it’s just me, Benjamin, and a car that is coming up really fast. I brace myself as it whips by me. It’s actually a half-ton pickup truck, the kind with a muffler that’s so loud it sounds like there’s a hole in it.
I watch it barrel down the hill toward Benjamin. I really hope he isn’t making so much noise himself that he can’t hear the really impressive muffler. Truck drivers think they rule the roads around here, which they end up actually doing because the rest of us have no choice but to get out of their way. I try to watch what’s happening and keep control of my own bike at the same time. I can just see the truck as it gets so close to Benjamin that it almost looks like it’s going to ram into him.
Suddenly the truck slows down. Benjamin turns his head toward the passenger side window, as if he’s listening to someone talking to him, and then he goes back to watching the road. The truck seems to hold back for a second, letting Benjamin get ahead. Then suddenly it speeds up, grinding into the gravel, spitting it up in a big swirling mess as it seems to swerve toward the shoulder and then straighten out before taking off down the hill and disappearing into its own cloud of dust.
I’m still moving forward, coughing a little as the dust and dirt find their way into my face. I risk removing one hand from my death grip on the handle and wipe my face so that I can see how close I am to Benjamin.
But I can’t see him. There’s nothi
ng except the road, stretching for miles until it disappears to wherever the asshole in the white truck decided to go.
Where did he go?
My pounding heart starts skipping beats in panic as I finally come up to the place where the truck slowed down beside Benjamin’s bike. It’s at a spot where the hill starts to ease back from a steep incline to a gentle slope, and I manage to remember how to apply the brakes and slow myself down. In my hurry, I try to get off my bike before it stops completely, and I end up falling onto the gravel with the front wheel spinning in my face. I push it aside, shoving the bike off me as I stand up.
“Benjamin!” I yell it loud enough to create an echo, but there’s no answer. I look around frantically, spinning in circles until I’m dizzy from the motion and my panic. I start to run up and down the shoulder, swiveling my head left and right trying to see in all directions at once.
And then I see him.
There’s a steep embankment at the side of the road, pitching down into a rock-filled ditch. Benjamin is lying on the rocks, his bike beside him, twisted and broken. I can’t tell from here whether Benjamin is twisted and broken too. My head feels light, as if my brain leaked out my ears, leaving it empty and hollow. I can’t find any thoughts as I start trying to scramble my way down the grass and stones to where he’s lying. I keep falling, then sliding before struggling to get up again, until I just give up and slide all the way down, ignoring the stones digging into me and tearing my clothes.
“Benjamin!” I call out to him as I hit bottom and then start crawling over to him military style. He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even turn his head.
His head. It’s covered in blood. He must have hit it on a rock when he fell. I can feel my stomach lurch as I stare at it, trying to figure out where the steady flood of red is coming from.
I move closer and gently put my hands on his cheeks, turning his head carefully to the side. I have to swallow hard when I see the massive cut on the back of his head. The blood is pouring out of him, dripping down onto the ground beneath him like some kind of horrible crimson waterfall. I stare at the stones painted red with his blood and for a second it reminds me of the art project that made him so proud.
Red for life.
Except that this red could mean the opposite! I feel a moment of blind panic, black spots shifting in front of my eyes making it impossible to see what I need to do. I take a deep shuddering breath.
Don’t you dare pass out! You need to pull it together. He needs you to stay calm. You have to get the bleeding to stop.
I look around for something to use but obviously there’s nothing here but rocks and dirt. I quickly rip my shirt off over my head and bunch it up so that I can press it on the gash, carefully so I don’t fill it full of germs in the process. I dig around in my back pocket with my other hand, hoping that my cell phone didn’t fall out on my way down to Benjamin. It’s still there so I pull it out to call 9-1-1. Nothing happens. No bars. No reception at the bottom of an embankment at the bottom of a hill at the bottom of nowhere.
I have to get help. I can’t do this alone. I need Ryan. He’s the town superhero, saver of people’s lives. Well, my life anyway.
What would he do? Did he panic when he was saving me the way I’m panicking right now?
I bet he thought to check and see if I was alive.
I try to take Benjamin’s pulse, but my hands are shaking so much that I can’t feel anything. I bend down and put my ear on his chest instead, listening for his heart. I think I can hear it, but my ears are so filled with the sensation of my own heart’s out of control pounding that I can’t be sure. I sit up and rest one hand gently on his chest, letting out my own breath when I realize that my hand is moving up and down with his breathing.
Now what?
“Help! Someone help!” I scream it as loud as I can, but it’s hopeless. No one is going to hear me from up on the road.
I keep applying pressure and screaming for help until my throat is so hoarse that I can’t swallow let alone yell. Enough time has passed that the sun is starting to set, disappearing behind the clouds and making everything seem so much worse that it takes everything in me to stop myself from crying.
I bet Super Ryan didn’t cry. Then again, he dragged me out of the water first thing in the morning with the sun coming up instead of going down. Completely different scenario. Right.
I take a deep breath and slowly move the blood-soaked shirt away from Benjamin’s head to see if the bleeding has stopped. It’s hard to tell in the dusky light, but it seems like it might have at least slowed down.
It’s now or never. I have to leave him long enough to get up to the road and try to flag someone down while there’s still a chance they’ll see me.
I put the shirt back on the cut, taking my belt off to secure it tightly enough to maybe make a difference if it starts to bleed again. Guess I should have thought of that sooner.
I push myself back up the embankment, trying to stay on my feet long enough to stop from sliding back down. I get up to the top where my bike is still lying forlornly in the middle of the road.
Great. That means either no one has come by in all of this time or people are in such a big freaking hurry that they just swerved around my bike without wondering what it’s doing there.
I stand at the side of the road as moist evening air wraps around me, the heavy darkness creeping in much too fast, weighing me down as I start to pray for a set of headlights to come and save us before it’s too late.
fourteen
“Can you please explain to us one more time exactly what you saw the truck do?” The cop is bending toward me, her breath sending a puff of garlic into my face with each word, which is making my stomach lurch uncomfortably until I’m afraid I’m going to puke on her shiny police-issue shoes.
“It passed me going down the hill, going really fast. I thought it was just going to keep moving past Benjamin as well, but it slowed down. It looked like someone inside the truck was talking to him, but I can’t be sure because I was too far away. Then it swerved toward the shoulder, toward Benjamin. I think. I’m not sure. Then it was gone, and Benjamin was gone.”
I’ve already said this three times, and my voice is starting to sound like a robotic telemarketer. The cops are looking at me like they think I’m full of shit. Even worse, like somehow they think this is all my fault.
I’m tired and scared. I want to know where Benjamin is and what’s happening to him. Everything since the headlights finally appeared has blurred together into some kind of surreal nightmare that I can’t seem to wake up from. I just have to keep going over and over the story as if, somehow, it’ll magically change into something that makes sense to the people listening.
It doesn’t even make sense to me. How could I be watching Benjamin singing and whooping it up one second and then be trying to stop his head from bleeding out the next? How did I end up here in the hospital, wearing a hospital gown, because my shirt is covered in Benjamin’s blood, and being questioned by a couple of cops who don’t seem to like my answers, even though they’re the only ones I’ve got?
I’m so tired my eyelids feel like they’re too heavy for my face. My legs hurt from the millions of scratches I put on them sliding down the embankment. I need these guys to leave me alone so I don’t accidentally cry. Boys don’t cry in public. It’s a rule.
“Hey, Jack!” I turn my head at the sound of Ryan’s voice. He comes wheeling across the floor, with his mother beside him.
“Hello, Jack,” his mom says to me, reaching over and touching me gently on the cheek. I take a deep breath and nod at her. She turns and looks at the two cops.
“He looks very tired. I think he needs to rest. His mother is on her way. If you need to question him anymore, I would suggest you wait for her to arrive.” She folds her arms and gives the cops a look that she probably perfected on badly behaved grade five students i
n her school. The garlic-breath cop opens her mouth as if to argue, but Ryan’s mom just glares at her until finally she shrugs.
“Fine. We’ll get back to him later.” She gives me a look and then stomps off, obviously pissed that Mrs. Malloy ruined her fun.
“Thanks,” I say, rubbing my hands over my face trying to push back the tears before they decide to make an appearance.
“Are you okay?” Ryan asks, coming up beside me and touching my shoulder. I just shake my head at him.
“Nowhere close.”
“I’m so sorry this happened to your friend, honey,” Ryan’s mom says, wrapping her arm around me and giving me a sideways hug. “Your mom just managed to get away from work and is on her way. You’ll feel better once she’s here.”
I’m so glad Mrs. Malloy called the cops off me that I just want to curl up in a little ball and go to sleep for long enough to forget everything that happened, and Benjamin is all better by the time I wake up. It will all become one of those bad dreams that you know you had but can’t fully remember. Just the sensation that something was wrong in the dark but is okay now that your eyes are open.
I don’t know what happened. I saw the truck slow down and then speed up, and then Benjamin was just gone. I don’t know if the truck hit him or just startled him. I don’t know if it was an accident or deliberate.
And if it was deliberate…I really don’t want to think about what that means.
“Jack?” Ryan squeezes my shoulder, startling me.
“What?”
“Mom asked you if you’d like something to eat or drink.” His eyes are worried, but it doesn’t bother me today. I’m worried about me too. I take a deep enough breath that I almost choke on it. I clear my throat, shaking my head at the same time.