The Last Time I Saw Her

by Alexandra Harrington

  “Where’s Sophie?” was all she could manage. “Are you okay?

  “I’m fine. Stitches,” Max told her, motioning to his side. He was shaking his head quickly. “Sophie…Sophie, she’s—”

  He looked away, pressing his fist against his lips, and Charlotte saw he was trying not to cry.

  “She’s hurt, Charlie. Bad,” he managed to choke out, his voice breaking on the last word.

  “Is she okay?” Charlotte breathed, grabbing onto his arms.

  “I—I don’t know. They don’t know.” Max’s voice was raspy, and he wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Someone hit us. They came out of nowhere. We flipped over, and when I woke up we were upside down…I found my phone and called 911 and the paramedics showed up but she wasn’t moving and I don’t…she’s in surgery now.”

  His breathing was coming in short, frantic gasps and his gaze was focused on the tiles beneath her feet. She felt like she was drowning, like she was being suffocated, as if his words were too heavy to bear, pounding down on her from all angles.

  She took a shaky breath. “It’ll be okay, Max.” Charlotte placed her hands on his shoulders to steady the both of them. “It has to be.”

  He wrapped his good hand around one of her wrists and leaned in toward her helplessly. “It was my fault. I was driving. It’s my fault if she—”

  “Don’t.” Charlotte cut him off. “Don’t say it.” Being mindful of his shoulder, she pulled him into a hug.

  “It’s Sophie,” Charlotte murmured, “she’ll be okay.”

  It had been four hours. Simon and Deirdre Hale had rushed home from some kind of function in Halifax and arrived about an hour after Charlotte had. There wasn’t much for them to say. Simon’s son was fine.

  From what Charlotte gathered, the second car had come seemingly out of nowhere, as Max had said, T-boned them, and fled the scene after the crash. Max never saw the other car, so the police had nothing to go on.

  Sophie’s parents, Robert and Ellen Thompson, were the first people Max had called. Charlotte didn’t like to think about how that conversation had gone. She had glimpsed Ellen once at the end of the lobby, on the phone. But after that, Sophie’s parents waited elsewhere; Charlotte suspected this was to be separate from the teenagers whose stupid game had gotten their daughter hurt, and so they didn’t have to sit across from the boy who had been driving.

  Max was speaking to the police again in another room. He had already given a statement and didn’t seem to know much else, so in the back of her mind Charlotte was trying to puzzle out what else they could be talking about. Charlotte somehow found herself sitting on the floor beside the chair Max had occupied before the police called for him. Delilah, Leo, and a handful of other kids were taking up several seats on the other side of the room, but Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to join them. She felt too heavy.

  She didn’t know why but she wanted to call her brother. He was good at fixing things. Not the toaster oven that had been broken for a year, or the second step on the porch, but he had a knack for making situations better. She pulled out her phone and hit his number. It went directly to voicemail.

  “Hey, Sean. It’s Charlie. I’m at the hospital—I’m fine, but,” her voice cracked. “There was an accident at the car rally. It’s Sophie. I know you’re out of town with the guys but if you could call me back….” It was harder, saying everything out loud. As if it made it more true. “Please call me back.” The phone slipped out of her hand onto her lap.

  She eventually picked herself up off the floor, wandering down the hall in search of a vending machine. Charlotte rounded a corner away from the rest of the group, nearly interrupting an intense talk Simon and Max were having. She ducked behind the Coca-Cola machine, out of sight.

  “…you need to tell me exactly,” Simon said in a low voice, “what happened.”

  “I did, I swear.” Max was sobbing, and Simon had his hand on his son’s shoulder but Charlotte didn’t think he meant it in a comforting way. “I don’t remember what happened.”

  “Try harder.”

  “Dad, I don’t…there was another car…I don’t remember,” Max heaved.

  “Then you were drinking?”

  “God, no. I swear, I already told the police. I was sober, Dad, I promise, c’mon,” Max’s voice was wobbly and muffled.

  “Maxwell, no, I need you to tell me exactly what you remember—” Simon said loudly.

  “Dad, I did—”

  “Sorry,” Charlotte said, stepping forward before she could stop herself. She didn’t know what she was sorry for. She moved between them, and she felt Max’s hand on her arm like he was tethering himself to her. “I think—” she felt so uncomfortable, “—Leo’s looking for you, Max.”

  She tried to lead him away but Simon stopped them. “Leo can wait,” he said.

  “No,” Charlotte said more bravely than she felt, tugging Max toward her and back down the hall. “He can’t.”

  “You should stay out of things that don’t concern you, Charlotte,” Simon said.

  Charlotte pretended she hadn’t heard, though the words sent a chill through her. She led Max down the hall back to Leo, settling him in an uncomfortable chair along the wall. Leo moved to sit beside him and didn’t try and say anything either, which Charlotte felt Max probably appreciated. She slid to the ground beside his chair, and placed a comforting hand on Max’s knee.

  They sat in silence for what felt like another hour, before a doctor appeared suddenly, silencing any activity in the room and making Charlotte feel like the air had been sucked from her lungs.

  “I’m looking for Sophie Thompson’s family,” the doctor said, holding a clipboard to her chest.

  Charlotte jumped to her feet, Max doing the same beside her. By then, Delilah and her group had risen and clustered around behind the doctor.

  “We’re here.” Sophie’s parents raced forward from the back of the room.

  The doctor motioned down the hallway with her head.

  Max started forward, almost automatically, but was immediately stopped by the ferocious look Robert Thompson sent him.

  “You’ve done enough,” he spat venomously.

  “Robert,” Ellen scolded, linking her arm through his and pulling him toward the waiting doctor.

  Max covered his face with his hand and remained standing, Leo placing a hand on his shoulder. Charlotte could feel her heartbeat in every inch of her body, as if she was hyper aware of every nerve ending. She moved and slid her hand around to the low of Max’s back, brushing it in small circles. Max wrapped his arm around her shoulder, pulling her against him.

  Ellen and Robert returned within a few minutes. Ellen was crying, and Charlotte knew immediately that it was not with relief. Robert looked like he had no idea what he wanted to say.

  When they broke the news, the sound that left Max shuddered through Charlotte as if she had made it herself. He pulled away from her and Leo, sliding to the ground against the wall behind them. Delilah was crying again, and Leo crossed the room to pull her into a hug.

  The only person who didn’t seem to have any reaction was Charlotte. She wanted to burst out crying because Sophie was alive. She would see Sophie again, talk to her again, hug her again. She was still Sophie. But she wasn’t okay. Everything about their lives would be different. They were too young and this wasn’t supposed to happen and Sophie should have been fine. There was nothing you could do when your best friend was hurt in a way that wouldn’t get better.

  “She’s out of surgery,” Ellen said, “she’ll be awake soon.”

  Maybe she’ll wake up and be fine, Charlotte thought wildly. The doctors would call it a miracle. Everything would fall right back into place, and they would all be fine.

  Max peeled his hands from his face, his cheeks pale and eyes red. “Can I—”

  “Don’t you dare,
” Robert roared. “You did this. This is because of you—”

  “Do not speak to my son that way.” Simon was on his feet.

  “Your son should be in jail—he could have killed my daughter!”

  “Robert, that’s enough!” Ellen’s voice cut above the two men. “He’s a boy. It was an accident.”

  Robert glared down at Max, who looked utterly broken and miserable from his place on the floor. “You will not see my daughter. Not in this hospital, not ever again. Because you know it as well as we do—this is your fault.”

  Ellen rubbed her hand across her face, choking on a sob as she dragged a path across her eyes, smudging her makeup down her cheek. Charlotte wondered if that was how she felt, too.

  The weight of Robert’s words kept the room hushed for several beats. It was Ellen who finally broke the silence.

  “Charlotte.” It was the first time anyone in the room had addressed her, other than Max. “We’d like you to come. Sophie would want you there.”

  Charlotte wasn’t sure whether or not she was ready for that, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Her chin jerked in a nod.

  “Come this way.” Ellen turned in the direction she and her husband had come. Robert followed after her without another word.

  Charlotte felt every other eye in the room on her, and was about to follow the Thompsons when a voice drew her back.

  “Charlie.” Max wasn’t even looking at her, his gaze focused on the disappearing figures. “Please. Just tell Sophie…make sure she knows….” He finally looked away and pressed his hand to the back of his neck, squeezing his eyes shut as his shoulders trembled. “God. Tell her I’m so sorry.”

  Charlotte didn’t think she was particularly artistic or creative, but she felt like she could see the process behind it. A painter would look at a scene and think: how would I paint this? How would I capture the slopes and dips and the bend of the light? A writer would think: how would I describe this? How could I explain the way her voice sounded? How do I line up enough words in the right order to express the way the energy felt in the room? Charlotte wasn’t artistic but when everything fell down at once she forced herself to think: how are we going to survive this? What are we going to do to get through this, and be okay? Sean did it too—she could see the way emergency back-up plans formed behind his eyes whenever something went wrong. Maybe that was the family craft, and she came from a long Romer dynasty of surviving and fixing.

  But right now she didn’t have any answers. She didn’t know how they would fix this.

  Leo moved again so he was sitting beside Max, slinging his arm across his friend’s shoulders. Max’s ragged sobs were the only sounds in the desolate white room as Charlotte backed away and stumbled after Sophie’s parents.

  She was crying again by the time she entered Sophie’s room and saw Sophie laid out in a hospital bed, smudges of her car rally war paint left on her face. She cried during the interim moments between when Sophie woke up, and when she realized.

  And then it was Sophie’s turn to cry, and Charlotte’s turn to cry less. At least for a while. At least for the few weeks they had before Sean sent Charlotte to boarding school.

  twenty-four

  Charlotte shouldered the Quik Mart door open. It was chilly for an August afternoon, way colder than it had been the last few weeks. For once, the clattering air-conditioning that blasted down on her from above the door was not a welcome relief.

  Leo popped up from behind the counter. “Hi, babe.”

  “Do you work every day?” she asked him. Charlotte could see there was no one else in the store as she dragged a loaf of bread off one of the shelves.

  “Pretty much. I don’t mind, though,” Leo said. “I’m saving up for a car.”

  “Oh. That’s great,” Charlotte answered, pushing around a few cans of beans on the shelf. She felt like she was barely awake. Delilah ended up not being able to stomach much more than a bit of chicken fried rice, but they’d still been up late at May’s. And Charlotte had eaten way too many egg rolls.

  “You sound pretty hungover for someone who wasn’t drinking last night.” Leo’s voice was muffled—she looked over to see he had disappeared behind the counter again.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I have a pillow down here on the bottom shelf.”

  “Ah.” Charlotte chuckled and carried the few groceries she could afford to the counter. “I can see why you’re going into engineering. It’s nice to know you’ll be building our bridges one day.”

  Leo seemed upset that he was being forced to actually complete a transaction, pulling her items across the scanner without getting up from his knees.

  “I’m tired,” Leo explained before she could criticize his customer service.

  Charlotte balanced an elbow on the glass that encased the cigarettes and put her head in her hand. “Me too.”

  “Max told me what happened.” Leo was eying her from behind a litre of milk. “He sounded pretty upset.”

  Charlotte had been able to go a total of four whole minutes without replaying the tiny bits of Max’s speech she could remember clearly. Not because she had been drunk, which she hadn’t been, but because it had felt like it. His words jumbled together in her head. Especially the last part.

  “Yeah.” Charlotte couldn’t look at Leo. “I was kind of hard on him when I shouldn’t have been. Did he tell you…what he said?”

  Leo nodded and pulled himself to his feet. “But he had told me a while ago.”

  She didn’t answer that.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Leo finished scanning her groceries. The weather wasn’t the only thing cooler than usual.

  “I just feel like,” she clarified, “he was drunk, or whatever…that he doesn’t, really, you know….”

  “You aren’t giving either of yourselves enough credit.” Leo smirked and Charlotte felt a surge of relief that he wasn’t entirely angry at her. “Don’t act so surprised. You really never thought that he was into you?”

  Charlotte sputtered for a second like he had insulted her. “I just, I dunno, didn’t consider it. He never…I’ve known him for years and he never…not before I left—”

  “Charlie,” Leo scolded, “the guy’s been through hell. Maybe consider that people change. What you want from other people changes. Relationships change.” He shrugged as he bagged up her things. “I thought you of all people might understand that.”

  Charlotte bit her lip. Things were clearly bad if Leo Hudson, angel of River John, was calling you on your bullshit.

  “God,” she said. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “I usually am,” Leo replied with an easy smile. “Listen, the focus since that accident has always been Sophie. Like, duh. Obviously. But Max is my best friend and sometimes I feel like people forget that he was in the car, too. He’s changed a lot. Like, do you even remember Max a year ago?” Leo shook his head. “Telling you how he feels was probably really hard for him. That night affected him just as bad as it affected Sophie.”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “Don’t just say you know,” he cut her off, not unkindly. “You don’t. Max literally spent this year in his house. He stopped going to things, stopped hanging out with us. He missed a lot of school. He kept telling people he was going to see his mom in Halifax for the weekend, but he wasn’t. He just stayed in his room and I was the only one who knew.”

  Charlotte was quiet for a long time. She and Max had both spent the year hiding.

  “I’m just saying,” Leo continued finally.

  Charlotte took a deep breath through her nose. “I know, I know. I need to hear it.”

  Leo chuckled. “Sometimes you gotta face the music. Speaking of, please go talk to him. He’s moved on to Adele and I can’t listen to her anymore. I’m gonna
drown myself, seriously.”

  Charlotte handed him her cash. “So, I guess I’m not allowed to go over there and completely break his heart, then?”

  Leo guffawed loudly as he hip-checked the register drawer shut. “Yeah, right. As if.”

  She was determined to go to Max’s and neither cut him out of her life nor propose their engagement. But Charlotte figured if he could be honest with her, then the least she could do was reciprocate.

  Maybe he won’t be home, she hated herself for hoping as she knocked on the door. No, Max was always home—either that or he was with her, or he was with Leo. There was a dull feeling in her head.

  The door finally opened and he was there. He was wearing his North Colchester High hoodie with jeans, his hair all wet and curly like he’d just showered. She didn’t like the frightened little flips her stomach did when she looked at him.

  “Hi,” he said, more pleasantly than she’d expected.

  “Hey,” she began slowly, “I was hoping we could chat.”

  Max grimaced but stepped aside to let her in. “That sounds ominous.”

  Charlotte stuffed her hands into the pockets of her sweater, her eyes sweeping the room for inspiration. “No, sorry. Um. I wanted to explain why I was kind of ignoring you before. And why I was such a bitch last night.”

  Max laughed. “I was going to go with difficult, or hard to get along with.”

  She smiled back. “Are your dad and Deirdre here?”

  “Dunno where my dad is. Deirdre’s at Blomidon for the afternoon. She sent me a Snapchat.”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s an aspiring sommelier, right?”

  Max frowned like he didn’t remember telling her that and led her into the living room. “No, I think that idea has passed and now she’s just drinking in the middle of a Tuesday.”

  “Come on, don’t say that like it’s any worse than being wasted at an eleventh grader’s party on a Monday night.”

  “Anyway,” he cut her off quickly. “You were here to talk about our misadventures at said eleventh grader’s place last night?”