Page 50 of What You Left Me

“Dude, stop being like this,” Spencer says. “C’mon. I’ve got two more bottles for us.” He opens his glove compartment to fish them out, wiggling them at Fly to entice him.

Fly doesn’t budge.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you’re starting to piss me off.” Spencer turns the ignition over. The White Whale roars to life.

“This is a dream,” Fly tells him.

“You’re right about that,” Spencer answers. “We graduated, we have alcohol, and Chris didn’t rat us out for leaving early. It’s damn close to being the most perfect moment of our lives.”

“Spencer,think.Just a second ago, we were past this moment, already driving, then we jumped back to walking. Explain that.” Fly presses his forehead into the passenger window. “We got in an accident. And I haven’t woken up.” Something stuns Fly. “Wait, shit. Didyoudie?” He shakes his head. “No. Petra would’ve told me that,” he says.

Spencer laughs so hard he almost chokes on his saliva. “Were you smoking before the ceremony or something?”

Time hiccups.

Crash. Smack. I killed my best friend.

Time returns to the scene outside the car.

“Spencer!” Fly pleads. “You can’t tell me you didn’t just live that.”

Spencer leans his back into the headrest. For a moment, the world was noise and blood and regret. Squeaking tires and grinding metal. Forward and sideways forces slamming and crunching and crushing. Fly is right. Thisisa dream.

But it’s also a memory.

Spencer remembers now. He turns his head as if submerged in jelly—slow and cautious—afraid to spook the current reality away. He sees him standing there—Martin Frederick McGee, his best friend since that kickball game in second grade. The first person he called when he found out he got into ISU. The guy who’s supposed to stand beside him when he gets married.

Fly’s still got his forehead pressed into the passenger window. A red dot is forming above his eyebrows. A condensation circle grows on the dirty glass. His eyes are swollen with fear, but still, somehow, hopeful.

“Why did you tell Petra about the pact?” Spencer asks. It’s all he can think to say. How can Martin McGee look so hopeful while acting on the very thing they designed around lost hope?

“I had to prove it was really me. It was all I could think of.”

“Why didn’t you tell her how you got the scar above your lip or something?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I have a lot of time here. Dreams are weird, man.”

They almost laugh. In another circumstance, they would. But they can’t now.

“They say you flatlined on the table,” Spencer says. “Now they’re saying something else is wrong. Brain bleeds and stuff.”

Fly opens the passenger door and climbs in. “Whoa.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” they both say in unison.

“Petra’s trying to help you,” Spencer says. “She came to see me. Get this—she was with Turrey and Brooke.”

“That’s why,” Fly says, realizing something.

“What?”

“In Turrey’s dream, she was there. And in Brooke’s dream, Brooke knew about her. I didn’t even realize then how strange that was. And then I was in some kid’s dream I’d never met at all. I think he’s Turrey’s boyfriend.”

“Yeah,” Spencer says. “His name is Daniel. They’re all friends now or something. Turrey’s dating his neighbor.”

The two boys sit in the stillness. Words seem trivial.