Page 58 of What You Left Me

“How long has it been since the accident?” Martin asks.

“Three days,” Petra tells him.

“That’s it? It’s been forever for me.” He gets quieter. “Please help. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

His words devastate her. Doesn’t he know how much she’s been trying? What more can she do? Rising from her puddle to face him, she focuses only the edges of his mask, where his normal skin is visible underneath. “Why did you do that?” she cries out. “Why did you leave early? What were you thinking?” With one hand on either corner, her fingers wrap around the mask. She tugs hard, putting all her weight into it. The force of the motion takes her to the ground. “People are dead!” she cries out. “People aredead! Why did you do that?”

In her hands, the mask changes again. It becomes the face of Ryan Hales, mangled and battered, but still moving. She looks back to the body beside her. A gaping, bloody wound is where the face should be, and the body reaches out desperately, arms like fishes flopping out of water.

Petra screams: two short yells then one long wail, like a flatlining heart monitor.

30

I hear two short yells then one long wail, like a flatlining heart monitor.

It’s me. I’m screaming.

But not aloud.

I’m screaming in my mind.

I shoot up from Daniel’s bed, panting, covered in sweat. My hands fumble for the bedside lamp. A warm glow lights up the black sheets and casts shadows on the wall it’s closest to, but in the corners, where a soft breeze from the open window makes waves with the curtains, darkness still lurks. I need that air to wake me up. Shake my nightmare’s hold on me. I open Daniel’s closet door and throw one of his hoodies on over his track T-shirt. Head covered by the hood, I tiptoe down the stairs, past Aminah and Cameron asleep on the sectional and Daniel on the chaise, over to my shoes. One shoe on, the other in my hand, I hop out the front door and into the still world of nighttime suburbia, triggering the motion-censored porch lamp. It casts a spotlight on me. I scurry onto the sidewalk.

The night above is clear and confident. I set my pace to match it. As I move into the breeze, it cools the sweat slicked onto my skin. I walk streetlamp to streetlamp, crossing empty intersections and past red lights. It doesn’t take long for my body to go numb, a helpless soldier to my thoughts, carrying me to the only place that makes sense right now. The beginning and the end of all of this madness.

There’s an opening in the chain link fence that surrounds the football field. I slip through as I’ve seen countless others do, sneaking into and out of class. Just as Ryan once did to catch me walking out of school.Hey! Petra, right?

The field is vast. No gym classes. No Friday night game lights. No white plastic chairs lined up in endless rows.

Just me.

• • •

Petra took me to a masquerade straight out of a movie I’d never admit to enjoying. A mask was on my face that I couldn’t take off, and Petra didn’t seem to want to believe that I was me. It was like I hurt her somehow, sometime between the hill dream and this one.

My doing nothing was definitely not helpful. Another bad idea from Martin McGee.

Rocking back and forth with my arms around a girl’s waist. I have that down cold. But talking to Petra meant real dancing. Lots of spinning around and carefully timed steps. I was better than I’ve ever been in life, that’s for sure, but it was still hard. We swayed and swirled, and she spoke like she was older. The mask on my face wouldn’t come off. Instead, it kept changing.

She was scared of me.

Iwas scared of me.

Who the hell am I anymore?

Saying I was stuck between living and dying was old news to her. Everyone in the real world knows way more about me than I do. And she said it’s been only three days. Three freakin’ days.

It’s been a century for me.

Still I asked for help, and man, do I love that glowing girl, because she got up and wrapped her hands around the edges of my mask. She pulled back so hard she fell. I felt a pain completely different than the accident. Not bones crushing, but like, my entire personhood going away. I was trapped in a faceless body, reaching for her. She was yelling at me.Why did you do that? Why did you leave? People are dead!

People are dead?

What does that mean?

Every time I think I understand, it becomes clear to me that I don’t know a thing. These questions multiply. This place is a vacuum, sucking me up then shooting me back out, leaving nothing clean.

• • •