In This Moment(76)

A long silence stretches out. I think of Jillian the first time that I saw her—pigtails and round cheeks and huge golden brown eyes like pools of maple syrup. She told me that she liked my lunchbox and asked if I knew anything about roly polies. I didn’t.

I gather air in my lungs and push it out through my nose. “It got late and everyone started passing out or heading home. Brian wanted me to leave my car and let him drive us home. I was stupid drunk at that point so I blew him off.”

“Give them to me,” she said as she took my keys out of my hand and stuffed them in the front pocket of her shorts. “You’re toasted my dear.”

I pursed my lips and cocked one eyebrow. “And you’re not?”

She smiled, pushed her bangs out of her face. “I’m fine.”

“I let her take the keys away from me and I didn’t even think.” I shake my head and feel tears roll down my cheeks to my hair. Cole touches my arm. He gently folds our fingers together and pulls our hands over his heart. “Actually, it’s worse than that. I did think. I just didn’t stop it.”

How can I explain the rest?

How can I describe that it seemed impossible that anything bad could ever happen to Jillian Kearns? If people were colors, the rest of us were greys and greens while she was electric orange. She was a force. A world of promise captured inside of one body. I never—not for a second—considered the possibility of that promise being broken.

She leaned her head back against the headrest and flexed her fingers over the steering wheel. I felt hot. Too hot. Groaning, I propped my leg on the dashboard for balance and opened my window. Moonlight and humid night air rushed in and streamed through my brown hair. My ears were charged and my vision was blurry. I gulped at the oxygen like I couldn’t get enough.

“Are you okay?” She asked, craning her neck to me.

I grunted. A sick feeling churned deep in my gut. “I feel like I’ve been stuffed full of cotton balls.”

Jillian laughed, blinked a few times. “I have no idea what that means but it sounds bad.”

“It is.”

“If you have to puke, just say the word.”

“Will do.” I adjusted the volume on the stereo so that the sound of David Guetta lifted over the uneven howl of the wind. “Hey, did you see that Tam got highlights?”

“Yeah, they looked good with her skin tone.” She glanced over at me. “You should consider it. You could pull a lighter color off.”

“What about you? You’ve been talking about dyeing your hair for years.”

She picked up a lock of hair and scrunched it between her fingers. “I don’t know…”

“I will if you will.” It was our battle cry.

Jillian laughed.

“Let’s do it at the end of the season,” I continued, thinking suddenly of the pool. “That way we don’t have to worry about the chlorine killing the color.”

“Speaking of swimming…” Jillian’s voice dropped and she rubbed at her cheeks. “If I oversleep tomorrow and have to do laps at practice because we’re late then I’m blaming you.”

I closed my eyes against the intense pounding in my head and let myself fall into darkness. “Bring it on,” I whispered.

The despair of the memory spills over me—harsh and unsteady and terrible.

“One minute we were on the road talking about swim practice, and the next... we were…” Piercing sounds and turbulent images surge through me.

Tires fighting with asphalt, the impossible crunch of glass, and the rush of salty water coming in through the open window. Jilly slumped unnaturally over the steering wheel—her hair tangled and dark with water and blood, her wrist braced on the dashboard.

I pulled on her shoulder. I tried to get her to move but her body was weighted down with water. I screamed. My neck burned. Blood dripped down my arm.

“Wake up! Please!” I begged. “I’m not going anywhere. I just…” I looked to my right through the dark to where the water was getting higher. “I just need to get help. I promise I’m not leaving you.”

Like static on a TV screen, my mind pushes through the images. What if this is all that I am? Chaos and shadows. Confused memories desperately seeking out the light. What if all the bits of me that meant something good are still trapped in that mangled car? What if I was able to crawl through that window, but I never really got out?

“It took the ambulance seven minutes to reach the site of the accident,” I say. “And by that time it didn’t matter anymore because Jilly was already gone.”

Cole’s voice is earnest, determined to find me over the void stretching underneath my skin. “But you weren’t gone.”