I looked over at Willow. She just shook her head as if she was trying to make the whole mess disappear.
“Are you okay?” I asked. My voice was a whisper.
“I think so,” she said. “You?”
I nodded, even though she wasn’t looking at me. Suddenly a man appeared at my window.
“Are you all right?” he asked. I was surprised I could hear him so well, and then realized that there was no glass in the window. It was gone. I unbuckled my seat belt, pushed open the door as it groaned in protest, and stepped out. Glass fell off me as I stood. It landed with a tinkling sound on the street.
Willow stepped out of the car as well and stared in horror at the damage. The car looked battered. It had been hit from every direction. Willow began to hyperventilate. It was one thing to steal/borrow your father’s car. It was an entirely different thing to steal/borrow your father’s car and then completely destroy it.
A skinny woman in stretchy knit shorts and a stained T-shirt walking by on the sidewalk shouted, in a cigarette-scarred voice, “Is everyone okay?” Amazingly everyone was more or less okay. A bunch of dazed people stood in the middle of the intersection surrounded by some severely twisted metal. “Well, you had nice cars!” the woman added.
“He’s going to kill me,” Willow said. “I killed the car.”
“It can be fixed,” I said, but as I looked at it, I wondered if that was true. The car was barely recognizable. The front end was completely distorted. The sides were battered. The trunk no longer looked like a trunk. It had flown open and I could see the inside, where Willow had carefully packed the miracle drug into innocent-looking luggage.
When I saw the lights and heard the sirens, I realized that we had bigger problems than just a wrecked car. We had a trunkload of illegal drugs, and the cops were on the way.
I looked at Willow. She looked at me. We both looked at the open trunk. We could grab the stuff and dump it somewhere, but that was ridiculous. There was too much of it, and the cops were already here. Maybe we could grab her father’s paperwork from the car and take off, but where would we go? It would be easy enough for them to trace the car back to us, and even if we claimed it was stolen, there were plenty of eyewitnesses who had seen us step out of it after the crash.
Willow walked over to the trunk while the cops rounded up witnesses and the paramedics took care of the various scrapes and bruises of the victims. I didn’t know what she was doing there until I heard the crackling noise. When I looked at her, I saw a tongue of orange flame leaping from the trunk. She was burning the evidence. We both walked over to where one of the police officers was taking down names and reviewing insurance cards, aware that at some point the gas tank would catch and things would get ugly.
We were not that lucky. Fire trucks were already on the scene, and one of the firemen, eager for work, spotted the flames coming from our trunk. They doused the car with foam, and the fire was extinguished before it had been able to do much damage.
“You came out of that car there?” asked one of the paramedics.
Neither of us really wanted to answer that question, but we both nodded.
“I’m gonna take you down to the hospital,” he said. “Your car suffered the worst of it. I want them to make sure you’re okay.”
We both refused to get on the stretcher, although the paramedic insisted we could have a concussion or even some fractured bones that we were too dazed to feel. I got the impression that this was his first day, but I didn’t say anything to this effect. I didn’t say anything at all.
Our bubble had burst and we’d been thrown back into the real world. It was not a nice place to be.
A Couple Hours Later
Despite the eager-beaver paramedic’s assessment of us as a priority situation, there was nothing actually wrong with us. So we waited around for a while in the hospital’s emergency room. We waited first to see someone to take down our information. A woman with artificially red hair that reminded me of tomato soup asked endless questions that didn’t seem relevant.
“Okay, Priscilla,” she said, like we were old buddies even though she had to ask for my name only moments before, “have a seat and a nurse will call you when we’re ready.”
Willow and I sat down again in the dirty plastic chairs. I’d always hated hospitals and avoided them at all costs. They smell like death and institutionalized food—disturbingly similar smells. They crawl with germs and bad luck. On top of it all is the cold, uncaring feel that they give off. Yet despite my hatred of hospitals, I was glad I was there.
I knew that at a nearby intersection, a city cop was about to make the find of his life when he perused the trunk of Mr. Jenkins’ car. I could only imagine what would happen next. He would have our names, and maybe put us into the computer to see if there was any record of us, and then he would find the motherlode. Not only were we mixed up in drugs, we were killers who would soon stand trial for vehicular homicide. We would burn in hell forever, and he would probably get a fancy plaque for his valor.
I felt something jabbing me in the leg. I stood up and emptied a handful of shattered glass from the pocket of my shorts into the wastebasket. The straps of my bikini dug into my neck and shoulders, and the bottom of my suit chafed my thighs.
“I fucked up,” Willow said. “I really fucked up.”
“Your dad has insurance,” I said. “It’ll all be covered. Besides, it wasn’t even your fault.”
She looked at me and I knew she wasn’t talking about the accident. I shrugged because I couldn’t think of anything optimistic to say to ease her mind. I didn’t see any way out of this mess.
I briefly considered calling Christian, then remembered that I’d ended our previous conversation by calling him an asshole and hanging up on him. Besides, I knew his feelings toward Willow, and I couldn’t betray her like that. I was sure that calling him wouldn’t help her, only hurt her.
I picked up a magazine from the waiting room table but didn’t get past the front cover—Davies Pauliny striking a rock star pose. It reminded me of the poster in Andrea’s bedroom. The time I’d spent there with her now seemed like a million years ago. I wished I could go back, start this summer all over again, but it didn’t work that way. I knew that all too well.
“I’m just going to have to face up to everything,” Willow said. “I mean, I can’t avoid anything any longer. I’ll tell them. I’ll tell Midge and Dad everything. I mean, everything that I’ve done, all the mistakes I made. I’ll come clean about everything. I’ll get everything off my chest and start fresh. I mean, completely fresh. No more drugs. No alcohol. I’ll be a new person. I’ll be a better person.”
The way she said it, it sounded like it could really work. That is, that a person could admit all their mistakes and suddenly move forward unhindered by the past. I wanted very badly to believe her, and I think she did too.
“We’re young,” I said, and I thought of Raisin by the pool. “We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us.”
“Yeah,” Willow agreed, but she didn’t sound convinced.
“Priscilla Davis.” The nurse called me first, and when we both got up, she said, “One at a time. Follow me.” She led me to what she called an examining room, but which was only a little bed surrounded by those temporary barricades made out of curtained screens. She handed me a flimsy hospital gown and told me to put it on. “You can leave your underpants on.” I knew if I told her I wasn’t wearing any, it would come out sounding wrong.
It was a relief to take off my bikini top, to free my skin from the binding straps. I pulled the cheap gown over myself and knotted the straps.
“Priscilla.” I heard a man’s voice behind me and thought it must be the doctor. I turned around and saw Christian standing at the opening in the screens.
I wondered if this could be a side effect of a concussion. When I blinked and he didn’t go away, I decided he was really there.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Are you a
ll right?” he countered.
“Of course I’m not,” I said. “Willow’s father’s car was totaled. The trunk was full of Ferocity. It’s just a matter of time before they slap some cuffs on us and haul us away to some state penitentiary full of Florida’s female lowlifes.”
“I can take care of that,” Christian said with a wave of his hand. “Don’t worry.”
“Well, in two weeks they’re going to try me for the murder of a woman I never met, a woman who died because I’m a loser and a fuck-up, and I don’t think I can sit up there on the witness stand and lie. I think I have to tell them everything, the whole truth.”
“I told you I would work that out for you too.”
“Maybe I changed my mind,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe I don’t want your favors. Maybe I want everything to play itself out the way it’s supposed to.” Willow’s talk had gotten to me. “I want to set everything straight. I want to start with a fresh slate, and the only way to do that is to tell everything, to lay the truth out for everyone to see.”
“That’s not going to give you a clean slate,” Christian said. When he spoke, he didn’t look at me but at my chest, which was concealed only by the thin gown. “Priscilla, I can help you.”
He reached out and touched my arm, and I jerked away. I thought of Merry and what she had said about him and his garbage-collecting habits. I was just another stray for him to rescue. I wondered where Merry had come from. Had he run a sting on a strip joint and found her?
“I need to get out of here,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” I started to move toward the opening in the screens, but Christian moved to block my way.
“Everything’s wrong,” he said, “but don’t worry. I can help you. I can set things right.”
“You’re not a god,” I said. My words banged out of my mouth like bullets. “You’re just a cop.”
I pushed aside another of the screens and made my own door. I stormed down the corridor looking into the other little examining rooms. I needed to find Willow. We had to get the hell out of here.
“Willow!” I shouted. “Willow! Willow!” It was just like in my dream.
One of the hospital workers was pushing a gurney toward me. There was someone on it, covered by a sheet. The sheet had slid off the body just enough to reveal the face underneath. It was Raisin. Her eyes were closed. I tried to tell myself I really must have a concussion, but I knew it was her. I ran to the gurney.
“Please, miss,” said the man wheeling it.
“Raisin!” I shouted.
Christian caught up with me and grabbed my arm. I pulled away and moved the sheet back even further. A deep maroon stain blossomed through Raisin’s pink T-shirt.
“Raisin!” I screamed, but, of course she didn’t even flinch. Dead people don’t flinch.
Suddenly I understood what Christian was doing at the hospital. He hadn’t come to see me. He couldn’t have heard about what had happened that fast. He was down here because of the drug bust. He had been there. And so had Raisin.
“She was pregnant!” I screamed in his face.
“Priscilla,” he began, but I yanked away from him and ran back down the hall before he could say any more.
I looked into each room, wondering if Willow was still sitting out in the waiting room, when suddenly I found her. As I ran in, I knew that something was very wrong. Willow was there, but not there.
I stared at her, trying to understand. She sat on the bed, still in her clothes. She stared straight ahead of her and seemed to be looking at something that I couldn’t see.
“Willow!” I screamed. “Willow, wake up!”
Did Willow have a concussion? Or maybe it was just stress? Could someone go catatonic from stress? It seemed like it might be possible. Then I looked down at something on the floor. It was bright pink, like a Benadryl tablet, but the wrong shape—a sort of hexagon. I’d never seen it before, but I knew exactly what it was. It was Ferocity. It looked so innocent, like candy, almost. Willow must have grabbed some from the car before her arson attempt.
I wondered how many she had taken. I wondered if it mattered. Bill said people could wig out on just one.
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. I needed her to wake up. I needed her.
“Willow!” I screamed. My voice was suddenly hoarse. “Willow! Willow!”
When Christian found me, I was still shaking Willow and sobbing. He was with a doctor, and they pried her from my grasp.
I heard the doctor say, “We don’t want these kind of cases here. It doesn’t look good.” Maybe that wasn’t quite what he said, but I knew it was what he meant.
I didn’t know who he was talking to. Christian, me, a nurse I hadn’t noticed. But it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that Willow wasn’t a person to him. She was a case.
“You’ve got to help her!” I screamed through my tears. “You’re a doctor. You’ve got to do something!”
“You need to take her out of here,” the doctor said, without ever looking into my eyes.
“She’s my friend!” I screamed as Christian dragged me away. “She’s a good person!”
Later that Day
There was a bus stop across the street from our motel. When I got off the bus, I saw Randy standing in the parking lot. He looked sick and exhausted, but I decided that this could be chalked up to the weather or the long drive. He stared at me as I stepped off the bus and made my way across the street to him.
“Where’s Willow?” he asked when I was within earshot.
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. We went upstairs to the room and I explained everything as best as I could. Randy listened without saying a word. When I was all done, he just stared at me with this glazed-over sort of expression. I really wanted him to say something, even to tell me that things weren’t as bad as I knew they were, but he remained silent.
Still without speaking, Randy helped me into the old, squeaky bed and we lay there in silence, the air conditioner blowing its cool and musty air onto our sweaty bodies. I clung to him, and when I closed my eyes, I almost felt whole.
I slept for hours in that bed, so completely exhausted that I couldn’t even force myself to get up when I had to go to the bathroom. I managed to lift my arm a few inches off the bed before it flopped back down and I fell back asleep. I dreamt about sex. It was a confusing series of dreams that included Randy, Willow, Andrea, Bill, Christian, and Raisin. While I slept, Randy made phone calls and arrangements.
By the time I woke up, it was starting to get dark out. Randy had packed up our stuff and loaded it into the car in preparation for the drive home.
We were halfway across the Tampa Bay Bridge when I suddenly realized what was missing. I looked in the back seat, as if I’d missed seeing her somehow.
“What about Willow?” I asked.
“Scilla, how much do you know about Ferocity?” he asked.
I shrugged. “What they show on the news, I guess.” I think I already knew everything but hadn’t admitted it to myself yet.
“It’s ugly stuff,” Randy said. “I found that out firsthand, at school. That’s why I got the hell away from it. I didn’t like it. It’s not just another fun recreational drug. There’s nothing fun about it.”
“But she’s not dead?” I said. “Willow’s not dead.”
“No,” Randy said. “Far worse.”
His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Veins bulged in his arms. His eyes narrowed to slits as he stared out the windshield, at demons only he could see.
“I’d think death would be the worst thing,” I said.
“No. Severe, permanent brain damage is the worst. Scilla, Willow is a vegetable—a walking, breathing vegetable. It’s not going to wear off over time. No one can fix her.”
“Do you think she’s still there somewhere?” I asked. “Down deep?”
Randy was silent for a long time. I thought maybe he was focusing on driving. H
e didn’t look sad, just angry.
“Yes,” he finally said. “I believe she is. But it’s really deep and she doesn’t know how to get back to the surface.”
“She’ll drown.” We passed a billboard with two bikini-clad women. “We never even made it to the beach.”
The whole thing didn’t feel real. I kept expecting to open my eyes and be back home, the telephone ringing and me picking it up to hear Willow on the other end telling me we were going to the mall or that she wanted me to come over. But that of course was the dream. Reality was the ugly, unbelievable thing.
I don’t remember the ride back. Randy and I took turns driving, and the thing about driving on a monotonous interstate highway at seventy-five miles per hour is that it all really looks the same, even those damn South of the Border billboards that shouted at us every few miles or so. It’s too easy to zone out and lose yourself in fantasies of how things could have turned out if only you had done this or that differently.
We stopped to spend the night in Petersburg, Virginia. I remember that not only because the name is so close to the Florida city I’ve come to hate, but because it was the site of a Civil War battle.
While General Sherman was busy reducing Georgia to ashes, Ulysses S. Grant was caught in a stalemate against Robert E. Lee’s army in Petersburg. The idea was that Sherman march his army through Georgia, then provide support for Grant by crawling up Lee’s butt. This turned out to be unnecessary in the end.
I was dreading the reunion with my mother. I expected her to rage at me, but she didn’t really say anything. This was not some form of ostracism. Maybe she was too stunned to know what to say. I didn’t know what she knew or didn’t know. I didn’t really care.
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