The Night of Your Life

by Lydia Sharp

  “No, I’m staying.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I need to see her.” My eyes burn and water, and I absently rub at them. For a second, my vision blurs. “I’m not leaving until I see her. I’ll wait until morning if I have to.”

  His mouth twists. “What if she doesn’t want to see you?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Look, I’m sure you had a good excuse for all this, but you know how she is. No excuse is justified when she’s mad, and this … Now that the fear is gone, she’s pretty mad.”

  He has a point, but I can’t even fathom that kind of rejection from Lucy, let alone how I would handle it. “Chaz, if you hadn’t been there—”

  “But I was, and it turned out all right. Full stop. Don’t start with the what-ifs; don’t go down that road. It leads to no place good.” Chaz pats me on the shoulder and squeezes. “I gotta go make sure Marcos made it home all right. I left him at prom so I could hop in the ambulance with Lucy. See you tomorrow, bub. We’ll catch up.”

  I glance at the clock again. “Technically today. It’s midnight.”

  “Okay, then, see you today.” He grins and I know we’re really okay. No bad blood between us because of this.

  Chaz leaves and I have my pick of empty seats in the waiting room. With my adrenaline fading, I’m suddenly very tired. It doesn’t take long for me to drift off, but what seems like a few seconds later, someone is shaking me awake.

  “JJ,” Signore Bellini says, his thick accent tugging me out of sleep. “You want coffee?”

  “Coffee … what?” I rub my eyes until his face and the clock on the wall come into focus. It’s after one in the morning. Ughf, I hope that smell isn’t me. Stretching, I lift my arms and—it is me. Sweat and Taco Bell are a bad mix. “Lucy’s okay?”

  He nods but still hasn’t smiled. “She want to talk to you now. Go before she change her mind. I will get coffee. Long night ahead.” He turns and walks out. Where he plans on getting coffee at one in the morning is a mystery, but maybe that’s not the point. He’s giving me some time alone to talk with Lucy. I can’t not take this opportunity.

  Her dad must have told the receptionist it’s okay for me to see her now, because all I do is walk up to the check-in desk and she escorts me to the back corridor without a word. Lucy’s not in a room, just an area large enough for a bed and a chair and a medical cart, sectioned off from the others like it with a thin curtain. It’s white with little blue flowers all over it. Entirely too cheerful for what happens here.

  The lights are dimmed and her eyes are closed. Half her dark auburn curls are piled on top of her head and the other half hang down in a cascade over her bare shoulders. She’s wearing dark red lipstick, which makes her mouth seem ten times its usual size—I could see those lips from Mars, like a homing beacon leading me right to her. I step up to the bed as quietly as I can and just look at her for a minute, listen to the steady beep-beep of whatever machine she’s hooked up to that tells me she’s okay. She’s alive. Her heart is beating at a regular pace and her breaths are slow and steady like they should be.

  I can’t see her dress except a black strap that comes up from the front and wraps around the back of her neck. Her shoes are under the chair, a pair of midnight-blue pumps with short, sturdy heels. Not like Melody’s or Jenna’s. Lucy’s never been one to wear “ankle breakers,” as she calls them. Always practical, safe, and thinking ahead.

  And she ended up in the ER anyway.

  When I sit on the plastic chair next to her bed, it creaks, and she flinches. Her eyes flutter open. She blinks and her brow furrows, staring straight ahead.

  “Lucy, I’m here.” I reach over and take her hand, and she turns her face toward me.

  It’s clear the very second she recognizes me. A brilliant smile takes over her face, even though her eyes are still sleepy. “Hey, you,” she says, her voice low. “Nice bow tie.”

  I swallow hard and can’t meet her gaze. I don’t deserve that smile. I don’t deserve her.

  “Your dad said you wanted to talk?”

  “I do, but I’m really tired,” she says. “It’s been a long night.” Her smile drops, and she lets go of my hand. Reality just set in. She turns her face forward again. “I’m so embarrassed, JJ. Everyone saw me … pass out.”

  “I should’ve been there. I should’ve told you what happened.”

  Her face drifts toward me. “What did happen? Jenna said you were in an accident.”

  “I was almost in an accident. You know that nasty curve on Huffman Road?”

  She nods and I continue the story, every bit of it, pouring my heart out like I’m at a confessional. Every once in a while her eyelids flutter like she might fall asleep again, but then she snaps back to attention.

  When I get to the part about going to Taco Bell, she stops me. “All right, I got the point. I don’t need to hear all the details of your fabulous night with this amazing new girl, while I was sitting around the whole time just watching the door, waiting for you to walk in …” She flicks a glance at the stain on my shirt. “Looks like it got messy at some point.”

  “It wasn’t—” I start, but she’s done listening.

  “It’s fine.”

  Which in Lucy Language means “not even close to fine,” because she is the ruling queen of Opposite Land, her native country.

  “You changed plans, you went with the flow.” She shakes her head at herself. “I should have known you would do something like that. I shouldn’t have jumped to assuming the worst.”

  “And I should have …” Checked on her anyway. Listened to my gut. “I shouldn’t have turned my phone off.”

  “We both made mistakes, I guess.”

  I try a smile, but it feels weak. “Forgive?”

  That’s how this works with us. We make mistakes. We forgive each other. We go back to the way we were.

  “I …” Her lips twibble and my heart rate kicks up a few notches. “JJ, I don’t think we—” Another twibble and she presses her lips firmly together, takes a moment to breathe. “I’m not sure it’s good for us to be around each other, if all we ever do is stress each other out.”

  “What are you— You don’t stress me out. What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  I do. I was hoping I misunderstood.

  “We’re too opposite,” she says. “And it only creates problems.”

  “So what do you mean, like, you don’t want me around right now?” I bite my lip and nod. “Okay. I’ll leave you alone to think, or whatever you need to do, for the weekend. And then I’ll—I’ll pick you up for school on Monday and we can talk, when you’re feeling better.”

  “No. Not just a day or even a week.” She swallows hard, closing her eyes briefly. “This was going to happen anyway, you know? Us splitting up. I’m going to Italy; you’re going to Texas. How do you think that’s going to work? We can barely go one day without arguing about something. Or just … annoying each other. And that’s without half a world of distance between us.” She still isn’t looking at me.

  “We have phones,” I say. “And email. Social media. We talked about this. We agreed to keep in touch.” I’m missing something. Something else happened that she’s not telling me.

  She shakes her head. “I’m no good for you, JJ. We’re no good for each other.”

  “That isn’t—” Something catches in my throat. “That isn’t true.”

  “It’s something that’s been true for a while,” she says. “I just didn’t want to believe it. But tonight proved we’d both be better off away from each other. Why try so hard to keep something together that’s always falling apart? We should cut this off now, not drag it out, if this is where it’s leading eventually anyway.”

  My eyes are glued to the floor, trying to find where my heart fell to, but I can’t find it. It’s gone. And the black hole it left in my chest is painfully sucking in the rest of me. I’m on the brink of implod
ing.

  “Please don’t push me away.” I can’t keep the tremor out of my voice. “This night was just a mistake—a big string of mistakes I’ll never do again.” I dare to look up, meet her deep brown gaze. Her eyes have welled with tears and I’m pretty sure this is what dying feels like. “Give me another chance.”

  Even as I say it, I know that’s not going to happen. There are no second chances. That’s been our mantra for years. For Lucy, it gave her reason to always plan ahead. For me, it gave me reason to always go with the flow. Our viewpoints were completely opposite—like everything else about us—yet neither of them kept us from getting screwed tonight.

  Her lip trembles so much her cheeks ripple. The heart rate monitor beeps a little faster. “I—I think you should go,” she says. “I’m tired. Let me sleep.” As if her words weren’t enough to make her point, she rolls over in the bed so her back is facing me.

  The top of the blanket falls, exposing her bare upper back. I’m never going to see her dress, and out of all the things running through my mind, that particular thought is what crushes the last bit of hope I’d been holding on to that this night would end okay. My throat tightens and my head feels like it’s been hit by a sledgehammer from the inside out and my dry eyes burn even more as moisture pricks them. I tug the blanket up over her back so she doesn’t get cold. Why is it so cold in here? My hands are shaking.

  Signore Bellini peeks in from the other side of the curtain, then steps around it. When he sees Lucy with her eyes closed, he silently holds out a to-go cup of coffee from a gas station. “You good now?” he whispers. “You staying?”

  “No, she doesn’t— She doesn’t want me to.” I leave him. Leave Lucy. And try to breathe, but it’s difficult when you no longer have air. For the past almost-four years, Lucy has been my air. Her dad catches up to me in the waiting room and offers me the coffee again.

  “Don’t drive tired,” he says. “Don’t drive upset. Be safe.” He lets out a long sigh, as if contemplating whether to say what he’s thinking. “Lucilla can be … like her mother. She need patience. I was not patient with Viola when she need me to be. So she had no patience for me, and she left. Don’t be like me. Capisce?”

  “Sì,” I tell him, but I don’t understand, not really. I take the coffee, wincing at the heat but also welcoming it, and promise to drive safe.

  But when I get to my car, even though I’m sort of awake enough, I can’t get rid of the “upset” part. So I sit. And dump this bitter coffee when it goes cold. And take out these moisture-leaching contacts. And cry, mentally kicking myself over and over. And go nowhere. And the clock keeps ticking. There are only a few hours until dawn. I promised my parents I wouldn’t be out all night.

  Now I am too tired to drive, but I have to get home before my parents wake up with the sun to feed the horses. I put on the pair of glasses I keep in my car as an emergency spare—another insistence of Lucy’s—and leave the ER lot, covering a mammoth yawn with one hand and steering with the other. Nodding off more than a few times.

  What am I supposed to do?

  I can’t lose her, not completely. She’s right; our split was inevitable. But not like this. Not forever. And part of me was hoping … maybe not at all. Maybe something would change at the last minute—isn’t that how things usually happen for me? For us?

  “How am I going to get her back?” I ask whatever higher being might be listening. I need all the help I can get with this.

  I’m about halfway home, my headlights highlighting a mist floating above the road, when … a groundhog lumbers into the path of my car out of nowhere, like it has all the time in the world, then freezes, just staring at me through the windshield, as if it’s daring me to hit it. Or maybe its life is flashing before its eyes. Either way, that ugly rodent is large enough to do some damage if I hit it.

  Instinctively I swerve, and without any sound—no screeching tires, no thud-thump of an impact, not even a whispered curse under my breath—the whole world disappears and I slip into a cold black void.

  My reflection in the mirror blurs as the floor vibrates, my bedroom window rattles, and a bright white light flashes behind my eyes. What the—

  Blue sparks fly in my side vision, and I whip my face in that direction. Marty is fritzing. Again? Should have tossed him in a dumpster after school on Friday, the useless piece of junk. I rush over and stamp out the sparks that landed on my bedroom carpet, then check the bottom of my Converse for any scorch marks. Nothing. Good. Now, what was I doing?

  I step in front of the mirror hanging off my closet door. My tux is perfect, crisp and clean, and I can see clearly without my glasses. But I swear I took out my contacts last night … and wasn’t I driving? I don’t remember coming home. I don’t remember anything after almost hitting that groundhog. Was I that tired? I didn’t even change my clothes.

  But they’re clean. The taco stain is gone. The dust from Melody’s car is gone, and my pits don’t stink. My bow tie isn’t around my neck; it’s crumpled in my fist. Just like it was when I was getting ready for prom last night … My head swims. Was it last night?

  The clock radio on my nightstand reads 7:31 p.m. Did I sleep all day? I pull my phone out of my pocket. Same time on there, but it’s showing yesterday’s date. Saturday. The day of senior prom.

  Okay …

  If the last night I remember as last night wasn’t really last night, that means I never actually met a person named Melody? That also means Lucy didn’t have a massive anxiety attack. That means she didn’t spend the night in the hospital. That means—

  I open my ongoing text conversation with her and find the most recent messages.

  Lucy: Where are you?

  Me: Leaving soon

  That means it was only a bad dream.

  I fall back onto my bed, melting with relief, and stare up at the galaxy of glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling that have been there since I was ten. It felt so real. I remember it like it was real, not fuzzy and jumpy like a dream, can remember way too many details—the floral scent of Melody’s perfume, the conversations we had, the panicked texts from Chaz, Lucy breaking up our friendship, and the deep regret in her dad’s eye when he said, Don’t be like me. But it couldn’t have been real, because here I am in my room, getting ready for prom again.

  No, not “again.” This is the first time. The real time.

  “Knock, knock,” Mom says on the other side of my door. “Are you decent?”

  “Yeah, come in.” As I get up off my bed, I shoot Lucy a quick text just to be sure my worst fear—losing her—didn’t really happen.

  Me: You need anything?

  Lucy: Don’t worry about me.

  The back of my neck tingles. In my dream, that exact text from Lucy caused a lot of trouble. No way I’m not going to worry about her, especially with those images so fresh in my mind, but that’s a strange coincidence. Shake it off. I pocket my phone and look up to find Mom staring at me.

  “Is that Lucy?” she says.

  “Yeah, I was supposed to be picking her up right this minute. You know how she is.”

  She smiles at that and sweeps her bangs to the side. “Yes, I do know how she is. But she’s good for you. You’re good for each other.”

  I’m no good for you, JJ, Lucy’s voice says in my head. We’re no good for each other.

  “Funny,” I tell Mom, mentally downing all the red flags that just popped up. “Mama told me the same thing yesterday.” Didn’t she?

  Please don’t push me away. Give me another chance.

  STOP. It didn’t happen.

  “Well, we can’t both be wrong,” Mom says. “You know the old saying, two moms make a right.”

  Sigh. “It’s two wrongs, and they don’t make a right.”

  “I was making a pun, James.” She narrows her eyes at me. “You usually love my puns. Are you feeling okay? Your eyes are all red. Have you been crying?”

  “I feel fine.” Sort of. A little dazed. “It’s just my
contacts,” I assure her, and myself. “They dry me out.” Not usually this fast, though. Didn’t I just put them in?

  “Maybe you shouldn’t wear them tonight,” Mom suggests. “If they’re bothering you already …” She takes the bow tie from my hand and fastens it like an expert in only a few seconds. I watch her in the mirror and try to commit her moves to memory. I can’t go the rest of my life relying on my mother to knot my ties.

  As soon as she’s done, I thank her and head to the bathroom, nearly colliding with my sister, the human tornado, in the hallway. “Look at you all fancy!” Shayla says, and grabs my hand. “Dance with me, JJ.”

  “Hang on a sec.” I tug away from her and shut myself in the bathroom. Shayla grumbles something on the other side of the door, and I’m pretty sure that request for a dance is now null and void. Her feet pounding too loudly down the steps confirms it. She’s mad I brushed her off. Whatever, I’ll make it up to her another day. I swipe both contacts out of my eyes and drop them into the case of solution. Lucy says I look better without glasses, though she’s never told me why. I can’t wear them that often and tonight is special. I wanted to look nice for her. But my eyes really are bloodshot. It’s not happening.

  I apply a few eye drops, slip my glasses on, and check my phone: 7:35.

  When I return to my room to grab my car keys, Mama is there now, too, holding her phone up like a camera. Her brown eyes are shining and her smile stretches from ear to ear. “Can I get a few pictures before you go?”

  “I’m already late.” I trot around the end of my bed and snatch the keys from my nightstand. “I’ll ask Lucy’s dad to take a few if we have time, but if I don’t get there soon, Lucy—”

  “It’s all right, go,” Mama says, still smiling, but the spark has fizzled. “Don’t leave her waiting. Have fun, JJ. You look great.”

  “Thanks, love you, bye,” I say in a rush, headed out the bedroom door.