by Lisa Luedeke
That’s the only thing I hear as we speed to the hospital.
*
Dr. Trumbull knows my mother from when she worked at this hospital. He is talking, his face stern: You have a concussion. You’re dehydrated. The pain in your chest is a bruised lung. He gives me six tight stitches in my shoulder. He gives me a speech about drinking, a speech about riding with someone who has been drinking, a speech about drinking so much it can poison you. He has never looked at me like this before—horror, revulsion, fear. He finishes and sends me away.
*
I wake on a couch in the waiting room, stumble toward the bathroom, vomit.
In the hallway, voices rise. Dr. Trumbull is reaming out Ron for not calling an ambulance.
“I got ’em here in fifteen minutes,” Ron says. “Would’ve taken an ambulance longer than that just to find ’em.”
“Alec could have had a back or neck injury,” Dr. Trumbull says.
Their argument fades away.
*
I am alone now, except for Ron. Alec needs stitches and his parents are in Bermuda. I don’t know what they need me to know: a cell phone number, a hotel name—something. They are bringing in a special surgeon to put his cheek back together. They need permission to treat. Why won’t Ron stop talking? I want to curl up in a ball in the corner. I want to sleep.
Ron is calling Portland again, talking to my mother. He is handing me juice, telling me to drink. He is bringing me soda from the vending machine. He folds up his cell phone, sits down next to me, waits. I pretend to drink what he hands me. I have nothing to say.
“You mind telling me what happened?” he says. He doesn’t say it mean. “There were bottles from here to kingdom come in that kid’s car, and they weren’t for Coca-Cola.”
I stare straight ahead, stare at nothing. He tries again.
“What were you thinking, gettin’ in a car with a drunk kid like that? Couldn’t you find someone else to drive you home?”
His question hits like a fist in the stomach. I press my back into the vinyl couch, willing myself not to cry.
“It wasn’t like that, Ron,” I whisper.
“You tryin’ to tell me you two weren’t drinking? I wasn’t born yesterday, Katie,” he says softly and catches my eye, shaking his head. Even then his face looks kind. “I’ve known you since you was born and this is the first time I’ve ever seen you smellin’ like the inside of a barroom after hours. You have any idea how many laws you broke just being in that car with all them bottles? You got any idea the trouble you’re in?”
Trouble. I can hear Ron talking still, saying words I don’t want to hear: possession, transporting alcohol, minors, open containers …
Thoughts dart through my mind, hit walls, and recede. There is no way out of this, no way to take it back. The realization drops on me like a bomb. Everything I might lose tears through my mind—field hockey, Coach Riley, a scholarship, Matt. Even Ron, with his kind eyes and offers to help, will disappear when he learns the truth: Alec was not driving that car. I was.
Ron is looking at me, waiting.
“I know I’m in trouble.” My voice is barely audible. Tears flood my eyes, run down my cheeks. I hide my face, burying it in my knees. How can I tell him?
Ron looks around the waiting room, brow furrowed. His thoughts are somewhere else.
“You tell your mother when she gets here that I’ll be right back. Don’t you move.” He points at me. “You drink that soda. And don’t talk to anybody, you understand me?”
He pushes open the lobby door with one hand and is gone.
*
My mother arrives. After Dr. Trumbull assures her that I am okay, she starts grilling me about “how Alec drove the car off the road.”
I curl up in a ball, my head in my knees, and refuse to talk to her.
They can find out the truth when they talk to Alec. I just want a few more minutes before the rug is jerked out from under me and my life as I know it is gone.
*
Ron is back forty minutes later with Harlan Reed in tow. Harlan is the constable in Westland, the law, the only thing resembling a police officer in our tiny village. If there is a complaint, an unexplained noise, a missing animal, a domestic quarrel, he takes care of it. Now he is here to take care of me.
They are talking, heads down, voices low. They find my mother, then disappear.
I have dozed off on the couch in the waiting room when I wake to familiar voices. I stay perfectly still, opening my eyes a slit.
“If the state police get called in she’ll end up in court, and God knows what will happen to her.” Ron’s voice is rising. He looks in my direction and checks himself.
I listen carefully, don’t move.
“I’d say she and the young man are in serious trouble, regardless,” Dr. Trumbull says. “Do you realize they were both still legally drunk when they arrived here this morning? And this was a good five or six hours after the accident. I think a visit to court might do your daughter some good.” He is looking at my mother.
“You listen to me, Fred,” my mother says fiercely. “I worked here with you for fifteen years and you’ve known Katie since I carried her. She’s a good kid. Never been in any kind of trouble. The state police come in and she can forget that hockey scholarship, and unless you want to pay her way through four years of college or have a better idea, I’m asking for you to be reasonable.”
Ron interrupts. “Fact is, this happened out in Westland and that’s Harlan’s jurisdiction. You can consider the police notified, Doc. You do your job and let Harlan do his.”
“I’ll take care of it from here, Doctor,” Harlan says.
“I’m not talking about police.” Dr. Trumbull’s voice is raised now. “I’m talking about getting that child some help.”
Outnumbered, the doctor wheels around and faces my mother again. “Sandra, I’ll go along with your wishes,” he says in a voice so low I can barely hear. “But don’t kid yourself. Your daughter’s in trouble, and I don’t mean with the law. First time or not, Katie needs some help. And you know damn well it’s my responsibility to make sure she gets it. Remember fifteen years of friendship when you think about that.” He turns and strides down the corridor.
My mother stares at the tile on the floor for a minute. When she finally lifts her head, her face is defiant but her eyes fill with tears.
“My daughter’s not in trouble, damn it,” she says to Ron, who guides her back to a couch, one hand on the small of her back. “She’s just a kid.” She rubs away the tears angrily.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sandra,” Ron says softly. “Katie’s going to be okay.”
*
Finally, Alec is released. A friend of Alec’s parents waits to take him home. His left cheek is covered by puffy gauze, the dressing bordered by a shiny, deep purple bruise. At the top, the filmy tape securing the bandage covers the soft hollow beneath his eye. A vision from the car—Alec’s cheek mangled and bloody—flits through my mind and is gone. He doesn’t look at me as he walks by and I’m too terrified to speak.
Crazy as it is, I am afraid of what he might do to me.
*
At home, I hide in my room. Lying on my bed, I pull the blankets up tight around my neck and try to stop shivering. I will my brain to shut off, to forget what I know: nothing will ever be the same again. Today was bad; tomorrow will be worse. The truth will be all over Westland—all over Deerfield—in an instant, as soon as Alec is well enough to pick up a phone or walk out the door of his house.
My eyes land on a spot on the wall next to my bed. For years, there had been a picture of my father and me hanging there. The paint is still slightly darker in that spot, a small square shadow on the lavender wall. After my father left, I’d put the picture in a little frame myself, staring at it every night before I fell asleep.
Then, sometime freshman year, after a bad day at school or at practice or something, I’d taken a swing at it. Just swiped at it with one arm and watched
it fly across the room where it landed, its frame broken. It had lain there for days before I’d stuffed it into my desk. Out of sight, out of mind.
On November third it will be five years since my father left. I’d circled the day in red Magic Marker on my calendar that year, back in seventh grade. As each day passed, I’d crossed it off with a big X, watching the red circle around the three get farther and farther away. Each day I thought, this has to be the day he comes back. He can’t stay away any longer. Each day, I was wrong.
I jump up suddenly. Pain shoots through my chest. Across the room, I whip open the top left drawer of my desk and dig around, throwing stuff on the floor. There it is, finally, under some postcards from Cassie and an English paper with an A at the top. The frame is gone and the edges of the photo curl up slightly.
I stare at the picture of us together. We are on the lawn in front of our house and it is summertime. My father is kneeling on the ground next to me, smiling, his eyes focused on the camera. He looks younger than I remember him. Would I even know him if I saw him now? Would he know me?
I wonder what he would do if he knew about the accident. Would he even care? Care that I could have died?
I want him to know about it. Not the part about the drinking, or Alec’s stitches, or the trouble I’m in, but the part about how close I came to death. I want him to know that I might not be around forever just waiting for him.
I might disappear, too.
12
The first night lasts forever. I’m in and out of sleep, in and out of dreams. Awake, my heart hammers in my chest, cutting short my breath. Panic mounts until I fear my lungs will burst. But asleep, it is no better. I’m hurtling through the forest. Branches scratch the windshield and it shatters. Blood splatters my face and hands. Alec lies dead beside me. I wake with a start and the cycle begins again.
Now, before dawn, I stare into space. Sheets lay twisted around my legs, blankets bunched up on the floor. My face is wet, as if I’ve been crying, damp hair plastered to my forehead. My body aches and the slightest movement brings a rush of pain. Bruises—deep purple, lavender, yellow—have appeared on my arms and legs like grotesque tattoos. Bug bites, red and raw from scratching, cover me like a rash.
Outside, a thin band of light appears on the horizon. I reach for the glass of water on my nightstand, but my trembling hand knocks it to the floor. Shards of glass now lie there in tiny pools. The day has barely begun.
How will I survive it?
My stomach heaves and I run to the bathroom. I’ve eaten nothing and nothing comes up. Sprawled on the bathroom floor, I wish, for a fleeting moment, that I had died in that car.
I feel a crazy urge to see Alec, to see if he’s okay. But it’s more than that. Waiting here is unbearable. I’ve got to do something.
Ripping through my desk drawer again, I search for my bankbook, the account where I keep all the money I’ve saved. I flip it open. Just over two thousand dollars. It’s certainly not enough for a new car, but it’s something. It’s got to be: it’s everything I have.
I stare out the window and wait for the clock to strike nine.
*
Nothing could prepare me for what I see.
When Alec swings his front door open, the gauze bandage is gone. His eye is black, his cheek purple. Exposed, a long row of stitches curves down his face from his cheekbone to his jaw. The wound is nearly four inches in all: red, swollen, held tenuously together by slender black thread. I hear the sharp intake of my breath. The ground is no longer solid beneath my feet. I can’t take my eyes off it.
Alec doesn’t speak. He simply waits, expecting me to enter. Hand gripping the door frame, I step inside.
In the living room, I offer him everything—all the money in my account—to pay for his car, his medical bills, whatever he needs. I even offer him the beat-up Escort.
He just turns his head away, and the black stitches on his bruised cheek stare back at me. “I don’t want your old shit box,” he says. “Or your money.”
Beyond the couch where he lays stretched out, I can see rain falling on the pool, sending tiny rings rippling outward in the unnatural cerulean blue. I haven’t been in this room since the night we went to the party in Bethel and we’d come here first to mix margaritas at his father’s bar. Margaritas the color of that pool.
Alec shifts slowly on the couch and winces, as if it hurts to move. My body is tense, perched on the edge of a nearby chair, hand clenching the rejected bankbook. He looks horrible.
“So your redneck friend was here last night, the one who has the hots for your mother.”
“Redneck guy … ?”
“The one who drove us to the hospital.”
“Ron Bailey.” I have no right to be mad at Alec now, but he has no right to talk about Ron that way, either. “He’s a nice man, Alec.”
“Whatever. He was here.”
I swallow, hold my breath, wait. It’s as if hearing Alec say it will finally make it real. Ron knows, I think. He’s already been here. He knows now that I was driving.
“You wouldn’t believe what he said.” Alec looks at me as if he can see through me, inside me; his eyes accuse. Stitches like miniature railroad tracks carve through the purple mess where his cheek used to be.
“He told me not to go around bragging about the accident to my friends or I could have a DUI on my head. Imagine my surprise.” He pauses. “I didn’t even know I was driving.”
“What did he say?” My words are a whisper.
“He said this thing will just blow over if I keep it to myself, don’t make a big deal out of it. Told me if I pulled a stunt like that again, it would be different.” Alec’s eyes never leave me. He is taking in every ounce of my reaction.
“So you told him …”
“So I told him, ‘Thank you, sir. I appreciate that,’” Alec says in mock politeness. “And he says, ‘I’m not doing it for you.’” There’s a faint smirk on Alec’s face. He looks straight into my eyes. “Maybe it’s you he has the hots for.”
I bristle, but I don’t want him to see my reaction. He’s baiting me, but I can’t bite. I have no right. I lost my rights when I drove his car into that tree.
“Why didn’t you tell him I was driving?” The words tumble out but they are low, barely audible. I am shaking again. Can he see that?
“Alec?” I repeat.
He lets me wait; it seems like days before he replies.
“Why didn’t you?” he says.
“He—he—” I’m stammering now and I hate myself for it. “He didn’t ask me.”
“Right.” Alec’s eyes leave my face at last, drifting toward the French doors and the pool beyond. I cannot imagine what he is thinking, but it is clear that he is. It’s as if he’s no longer here in the room with me. He’s gone.
“I’ll tell him now …” I move toward the phone but Alec’s hand reaches it first, clamping the receiver down.
“Don’t be an idiot.” His voice is firm, like a father admonishing a small child.
I pull back my hand, searching his face for a clue. I have no idea what to do.
Neither of us speaks.
“I need a nap,” he says finally.
“Okay.” I hesitate. We can’t just leave things like this, can we? I think. But I am no longer in charge.
“I’ll see you around,” he says. That’s my cue to leave.
I’m at the door when his voice reaches across the room like a hand and stops me.
“Don’t worry, Katie.” His tone is quiet, measured. His eyes are on something beyond the French doors, on something far away. All I can see is the back of his blond head resting on the couch. “Your secret is safe with me.”
13
Back at my house, Alec’s words run through my head.
Your secret is safe with me.
Trembling, I pace my bedroom, unable to sit still. Can I do this? Can I let Alec take the blame for something I’ve done? Can I live in a lie this big? Can I actually fool people?
Pull this off? Do I want to?
People have called while I am at Alec’s. Word is out across Westland and Deerfield. Alec Osborne crashed his car with me in it. That’s the story.
I have to pull it off. There is no other choice left.
The panic I’ve been feeling over losing my scholarship is replaced by the dread of being found out.
“Katie!” my mother calls up the stairs. “Matt’s here!”
I freeze. I’ve been so caught up in my thoughts, I didn’t even see him walking across the yard.
“I don’t want to see anyone, Mom!”
But it is too late. I recognize his footsteps on the stairs.
He is hugging me before I have time to think, his long, lanky arms squeezing me tight.
I pull away and sit down on the bed. “I was going to call you… .” My voice trails off.
“I’d gone to work,” he says. “I started hearing stories… . I told them I couldn’t stay. I just left.”
I grip the crumpled sheet on the bed, clench a ball of it in my fingers, and look out the window. I don’t want to cry again, but my voice is shaking now. I can feel the tears coming.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I had to,” he says simply. “I had to see you for myself.”
“Thanks for being here.”
He nods and looks into my eyes, then sits down on the bed beside me.
“It scared the hell out of me,” he says.
I wipe a forearm across my nose and face like a five-year-old. My head hurts. Matt crosses the room and brings back a box of tissues.
“So what happened? You look like an army of mosquitoes got you.”
Small red bumps cover my arms and face. I’ve been scratching them nervously and some are raw, bleeding. I’ve dabbed each bite with calamine lotion, but the pale pink blotches make me look like I’ve been splattered with Pepto-Bismol.
“I had to walk down Haley Pond Road to get help. The bugs were awful.”
Matt nods, but that isn’t what he meant. “So what happened?”
I explain how I’d ended up going to the party with Alec after Megan bailed on me, how I’d ended up in his car. “It was pouring out. The road was a mess. A real mud pit—and we were … we were just going way too fast.” I shake my head and gaze out the window. I can’t meet his eyes.