by Nancy N. Rue
Not that it would do me much good. Matthew was gunning the engine at the light, one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding onto my arm. His grip was like an iron claw, and it sent spasms of fear straight through my chest.
By then the guys were all standing up, and Kenny was squinting through the dusk like he was seeing something familiar. I waved and mouthed HELP.
Matthew tightened his man hold on my arm. “What are you doing?”
“I’m waving to my cousin. He saw me, and if I don’t wave he’ll think something’s wrong.”
Matthew swore again and peeled out of the intersection to the screeching protest of two cars braking on either side of us. He missed them both, somehow, and jammed his foot on the accelerator. I was plastered to the back of the seat.
“Stop it, Matthew! Just stop it — please!”
He slowed down again and swerved onto a back street that led down to the river. My fear spasmed to a new dimension.
“Can’t you just park somewhere and we’ll talk?” I said.
“I —”
“I know, you can’t. Then can you just not kill me tonight?
Please.”
He eased off on the gas and turned onto the road that ran parallel to the water. I let myself breathe.
“We’ll just drive,” he said. “I’ll go slow.”
I didn’t consider houses whipping past me “slow,” but it was better than clinging to the door handle and fearing for my life. Without all the tire squealing and the heart pounding I could think again, and the first thing I thought was that nobody in the Fringe was violent. They didn’t care enough about anything to get worked up about it.
And suddenly, that made me mad.
“So — you hate the prom so everybody else has to?” I said.
Matthew glanced at me, eyes startled.
“Watch the road, Earnhardt Junior,” I said.
He whipped his gaze back to the windshield and brought the car off the shoulder.
I sat up straight in the seat and folded my arms. I could feel my heart beating, as much from anger now as fear. “I don’t get it,” I said. “You and Deidre and Yuri don’t care about anything. Why did you suddenly get a case of conviction over this? Something that means something to me? I just never thought you were mean.”
“I’m not mean.” His cheek muscles twitched. “You’re the only girl who ever treated me like I don’t have the plague. Even Deidre doesn’t get me half the time.”
“So that’s your argument for —”
“I’m protecting you, okay? Something’s going to go down when you do that prom queen walk thing, or whatever it is, and this was the only way we could think of to keep you from getting hurt.”
“Why couldn’t you just come to me and tell me, instead of sending me a note with cut out letters like some serial killer?”
Matthew slammed on the brakes and took the car off the road onto the gravel. The mirror on my side grazed a sign pole before we skidded to a stop. He had both hands on my arms before the car even stopped rocking.
“What note?” he said.
“You know what I’m talking about.” “I don’t!” He shook me, hard enough to clack my teeth together.
“Okay, stop,” I said. “You’re freaking me out, Matthew.” His grip tightened. “What note?”
“The note you evidently sent, telling me if I went to the prom it was going to be like a scene from Carrie. That note.”
“I didn’t send that note,” he said. “I don’t even know who Carrie is.”
“Whatever. Matthew, the RC’s aren’t going to ruin their own prom just to humiliate me. YouTube and his little minions aren’t even going to be there. They already got picked up for drinking.”
Matthew shook his head and pulled me closer to his face. His breath had the odor of dry-mouthed anxiety. “It’s not them I’m protecting you from,” he said. “It’s Yuri.”
“What?”
“He hated the way they were treating you over this prom queen thing, so he had Deidre set up the explosion in Chemistry to scare them.”
“How did Deidre —”
“But then you started hanging out with those people — the same ones that made his life a total nightmare in middle school.”
“I wasn’t ‘hanging out’ with them —”
“In Yuri’s eyes you were. And he just wants to make you pay for turning into one of them.”
“That is the most inane, stupid — Matthew, that doesn’t even make any sense.”
Matthew let go of one arm to wipe the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. I was sure we were both giving Mr. Linkhart a run for his money at that point. “I tried to tell him that, but it’s like he’s lost it or something. The only thing I could think of to do was to tell him I was taking you to the prom, and then not take you.”
“I don’t even want to know what you were planning to do with me for four hours.”
He started to answer, but I put my free hand on his mouth. A thought seared right in front of everything else.
“He’s there?” I said. “Yuri’s at the prom right now?”
Matthew nodded.
“You have to take me there.”
“I can’t.”
“Enough with that! Don’t you see? If he’s losing it like you say he is, he’s going to be livid when he doesn’t see me on that stage. Other people besides me are going to get hurt, Matthew. What about all the kids like, like, okay, Izzy?” I felt the panic rise. “What about Valleri?”
I clawed my fingers into the front of his shirt and pulled him even closer into my face.
“You have to take me to the school,” I said. “Now. And so help me, if you say you can’t, I will lay on that horn —”
“Okay, okay, chill.”
“No, Matthew,” I said. “I can’t.”
He swallowed, licked his lips, did everything but open the window and throw up.
“Come on,” I said. “There’s still time before they make the announcement.”
Finally he nodded. I closed my eyes, and I prayed.
The drive to the school was never ending. I alternated between silently talking to God and talking to Matthew in the calmest voice I could manage, telling the kid he was doing the right thing, assuring him that he wouldn’t regret it.
“This might even be a God thing,” I said. “Now that we know this about Yuri, he can get help.”
Matthew went over the center line on that one. Okay, so maybe God and I should keep our conversation private.
At least it was working. Matthew was driving at less than through-the-windshield speed and was nodding at most of what I was saying.
Until we made the last turn onto the school street. Two police cars were parked in the circular driveway. The four officers leaning against them looked up in unison as we careened around the corner. One of them was already charging toward us when Matthew floored the gas and shot past the driveway toward the gymnasium wing.
Cars were parked on both sides of the road, barely leaving room for Matthew’s car to screech through. The engine was whining almost as high as I was screaming, but he didn’t stop.
Not even when a figure stepped out from behind the last parked car. There was no time. I heard the sickening thud before I could even yell for Matthew to stop.
“You hit someone!” I cried.
Matthew pawed for the brake, and I found the door handle. But with my door halfway open, he hit the accelerator again and the car leaped forward.
Still screaming, I pushed the door all the way and jumped. The road came up to meet me and I slid on my side until I hit something. It moaned under me.
“Oh my gosh — are you all right?”
I turned over and pushed myself up with my arms. I was up against a crumpled heap of coral fabric that oozed blood as I stared in horror.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no, no —”
But before I even uncovered her face, I knew it was Valleri.
Chapter Nineteen
I screamed for help, even though footsteps already pounded toward me. But when they reached me, I couldn’t let go of Valleri.
“Let me stay with her,” I begged the officer who crouched beside me. “Don’t make me leave her.”
“I need to find out if she’s breathing, hon, and stabilize her head,” he said.
I didn’t let go of her hand, and when he pressed his fingers to her throat and her eyes fluttered open, I held her hand tighter to my chest.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
“You stay right here with her,” the officer said. “I’m going to clear a path for the ambulance.”
“Tyler.”
I turned my ear to Valleri’s lips.
“Pray,” she whispered.
I did. Through the tears and the panic and the faraway whine of the ambulance, I prayed. Valleri breathed on; I could hear the wheeze against my cheek and it terrified me. Between prayers I just kept saying, “It’s okay — you’re going to be okay.” And then I prayed again for it to please be true.
She stayed with me, moving her lips even when no sound slipped through, until the EMTs came. Then she went limp in my arms.
“We’re going to have you wait right over here,” one of them said to me. “We’ll get to you in just a sec.”
I would have protested if other hands hadn’t found their way to me and pulled me off the sidewalk and onto the grass. Even then I tried to get away, but a sharp pain in my side and the sound of Kenny’s voice stopped me. “I seen you by the Jiff-E-Mart —”
I turned and reached for my cousin, hands groping. Someone else grabbed me and kept me from pitching face forward.
“You need an ambulance,” Graham said.
“No — you have to help me,” I said.
Thoughts scrambled to get a footing. Yuri was still in there — in there at the prom. I had to get him out — and I had to get him out myself.
“Help me get inside,” I said to Graham.
“Are you nuts? You can’t even hardly stand up —”
“Then hold me up. I have to find Yuri.”
“You have to get to a hospital —”
“You ain’t gonna stop her now, I know that thing.” Kenny buried his shoulder under my armpit. “You get the other side.” “This is crazy,” Graham said.
I took in a ragged breath. “You can have me locked up after I find Yuri. Just get me inside.” “I don’t believe I’m doing this.”
Graham got on the other side of me and held me up with an arm that was unexpectedly strong. For some reason my head swayed, but I put one unsteady foot forward and then the other one. Without both of them hanging on to me, I wouldn’t have stayed vertical.
“Pretend you’re my dates,” I said as we got near the door.
“Yeah, we look it,” Graham said.
“It’ll be dark,” I said. “Just get me inside and you can wait out here if you want.”
“Not happenin’,” Kenny said.
Graham stopped us. “I’m not taking you any farther ‘til you tell me what’s going on.”
My face wanted to collapse. I couldn’t fold now.
“He’s going to ruin the whole thing,” I said in chokes and sobs. “All I want to do is get him out of there before he does.”
“It’s just a freakin’ prom,” Graham said.
“It’s not about that! You don’t understand. People deserve —”
“I’ll explain it to you later, dude,” Kenny said. “Let’s just go ‘fore she falls out right here.”
Graham sucked in air and nodded. In one final lift, they got me to the door. The only adult there was Ms. Dalloway, who looked at us with her usual weariness. I almost cried again I was so thankful for that. The news of the accident hadn’t gotten this far yet. I still had time.
“I was wondering where you were,” she said over the din from inside.
“I’m here,” I said. “I left my ticket in the car —”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said. “Get in there and enjoy yourself. You deserve it.”
She returned to her post. I peeled my arms away from Graham and Kenny.
“Can you just watch for him outside?” I whispered in Graham’s ear.
“Five minutes and then I’m getting the paramedics.”
“Do whatever you have to,” I said. “Just stop him.”
They both let go of me, and I stood for a moment until the room stopped moving. With one hand on a wall of flowers, I got myself down the tunnel of blossoms and through an archway dripping in vines. It was probably beautiful. All I wanted it to be was strong enough to hold me up.
I finally reached the gym-turned-Wonderland and leaned against a column wound ‘round with more blooms. A slow song was playing and the lights were lowered to a sultry blue. Everyone was a shadow, clinging to another shadow. I couldn’t see who anybody was, and I started to panic again. How was I going to find Yuri in this?
My knees were weakening, and I had to put my arm around the column to keep from going down while I tried to think. My side was starting to hurt. I pressed my hand there, and felt another hand slip around my waist.
“You got my message,” someone said.
I gasped and turned my face up — to see Patrick grinning down at me.
“You wanna dance?” he said.
I flung my arms around his neck and held on. And shook.
Patrick started to sway, but I held on harder.
“Tyler?” he said. “Tyler, what’s wrong?”
Still clinging to him, still forcing myself not to give in to the pain that was now throbbing in my side, I rattled off the basics into his ear. I didn’t even tell him about Valleri or Matthew. I finished with, “We have to find Yuri before they announce —”
“I know where he is,” Patrick said. “He’s taking pictures.” I tried to pull away to look, but it was now Patrick who held on.
“What happened to you?” He pushed my face into the beam of light that escaped from behind the column. “Oh my —”
“We have to get him out of here!” I said.
The song shifted into something faster, and voices squealed and bodies pulled apart and formed more shadows.
“One more dance!” Egan’s voice cried through the speakers. “And then we’ll announce the queen of the prom!”
“Now!” I said. “Hurry!”
Patrick nodded and scooped me into his arms. Someone yelled, “All right, Sykes!” as he carried me through the gyrating crowd over to the corner where Noelle and Fred were smiling into the camera. Yuri held up three fingers, counted them down, and flashed. Patrick set me down and had Yuri by the shoulders from behind before the smiles faded from their faces.
I didn’t know what Patrick was saying to Yuri, but I could see him struggling under Patrick’s hands.
“Patrick, wait!” I said. “Let me —”
In the instant that Patrick turned from him to me, Yuri wriggled himself free and ran straight for the Exit sign that jarred through the misty lights of Wonderland.
Patrick took off after him, with me groping through the pain and the dark patches.
“Let me talk to him!” I cried again.
This time Patrick didn’t turn to me. If he had, he would have run into the steel door Yuri flung open.
And then it all stopped — me, Patrick, even Yuri. Because the doorway was blocked by something huge and brassy.
A tuba.
Patrick wrapped his arms around Yuri from behind and lifted him off the ground. The tuba backed up, and Kenny caught me just as I toppled forward and out into the dark. The door closed behind us. The music never stopped playing.
“All right, everybody just stay where you are.”
I didn’t have to look to know it was one of the policemen.
“Tell him he doesn’t have to break up the prom,” I said to Kenny. “Tell him!”
And then the dark places became one hole, and I fell into it.
No one told me until
the next morning that Valleri was in a coma. Mom told me other things too as she fiddled with my IV and rearranged my covers and fed me ice chips and monitored my pain meds — all under the exasperated looks coming from the nurses.
She told me that I’d ruptured my spleen when I jumped out of Matthew’s car. That they’d had to do surgery. That I was a complete idiot for doing what I’d done. And that she loved me.
My father was in and out. Whenever he was in, I pretended to be asleep so I wouldn’t have to hear him say he told me so. He still talked to me — told me it was going to be all right, that I had the best doctors, that he’d get me anything I needed.
But all I really took in was that Valleri was alive. It didn’t hit me until early afternoon, when the anesthetic fog had lifted, that a coma was not a good thing. That Valleri, my Valleri, could die.
I drifted through tears and pain-drug sleep until almost sunset, when Sunny rubbed my arm.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” I said.
“I chased them out of here — they’re getting something to eat downstairs. They were driving everybody nuts.” She smiled close to my face. “You have some visitors.”
I turned my head. “I don’t really want to see anybody.” “You’re not going to want to miss this,” she said. “Just for a minute?”
I nodded. Maybe it would be Patrick. I did want to talk to Patrick.
But it was Joanna. And Hayley. And Alyssa. They looked nothing like prom queen candidates and everything like white-faced, frightened little refugees cut off from their old reality.
Joanna said nothing but crossed the room and found space among the IV tubes to get her arms around me. She cried, of course.
Hayley leaned over me, not a bubble in sight. “You don’t look as bad as I thought you would,” she said.
“Very nice, Hayley.” Alyssa licked her lips, which seemed naked and young without their gloss. “We brought you something.”
Joanna pulled herself off me, just as I was about to tell her she was pressing on my incision. “You won,” she said.