“You could put all of our houses into your house, Semantha,” Susie said.
“How many servants do you have?” Bobbi asked.
“None.”
“None? Not even a maid?” Eddie asked.
“No. Cassie and I and my mother do all the work. My mother likes it that way. She’s a great cook, and Cassie’s a great cook too, so we don’t need a cook.”
“Lucky you,” Bobbi said, and I could feel the underlying resentment of the Heavenstone family slowly returning.
“We inherited the house,” I told them, hoping that would make it sound more acceptable.
“My father inherited my grandfather’s debts,” Noel quipped.
“How is your mother?” Kent asked.
“She’s getting better, thank you.”
“I would like to see the inside of your house someday,” Susie said. They all agreed.
“As soon as my mother’s well enough, I’ll invite you all to dinner.”
“To dinner?” Eddie asked.
“Yes.”
“Do we have to wear jackets and ties?” Noel asked, smiling.
“No, of course not.”
“We have to mind our manners, though,” Eddie said. “No eating with your fingers, Noel, like you do at your house.”
“My parents aren’t stuffy people,” I said defensively, maybe too defensively. No one spoke for a few moments.
“Where we going for pizza?” Kent asked to break the silence. “Let’s stop at Luigi’s, which is right before the mall. The mall place is nothing.”
“Big spender,” Noel said. “That is more expensive than the mall pizza, though.”
“We could chip in,” Susie said.
“I bet Semantha could buy it all,” Eddie quipped. To my surprise, even my new girlfriends laughed.
“I didn’t bring much money,” I said, in a little panic.
“Just kidding,” Eddie said. “If we can’t afford some pizzas and drinks, we oughtta stay home.”
Even so, I felt a combination of embarrassment and annoyance. The conversation moved on to other things, but the echo of their insinuations about me and my family and our wealth hung in the air around me. Once again, I wondered if Cassie wasn’t right. We were different, and we should be more discriminating about whom we chose as friends. I hated feeling like this, but I couldn’t shake it off. At the restaurant, I know I was markedly quieter than the other girls. Kent kept asking me if I was all right.
“You don’t mind eating in a dump like this, do you, Semantha?” Eddie asked with a wide smile.
“Stop it, please, Eddie. I’m not a snob.”
Eddie laughed, but that seemed to end the teasing.
Kent whispered an apology for him as we left the restaurant. “He’s just feeling his oats because he’s able to drive at night and has a new SUV,” he explained.
I tried to relax, but no one else but me seemed to be enjoying the movie later. Eddie and Susie talked so much that people around us began to complain loudly. Bobbi and Noel were kissing so passionately that they couldn’t have followed the story, anyway, so when Eddie suggested that we leave and go to Cary Lothar’s house, they all leaped out of their seats.
“C’mon,” Kent urged me. I had no choice but to follow them out. Our leaving brought some applause from the people who were sitting behind and in front of us.
“How can we just go to Cary Lothar’s house?” I asked when we all got into Eddie’s SUV.
“He’s home alone with Nikki Benson and told me we could come over after the movie, but why waste time, especially with this dog of a film?” Eddie said.
I was afraid to say I had been enjoying the movie. As soon as we got into the SUV, Kent put his arm around my shoulders and urged me to draw closer. He kissed my cheek and neck, and then, when I turned, he kissed me on the lips. I was self-conscious about kissing like this in front of the others, but aside from Eddie, who had to drive, everyone else was kissing, too. However, Susie was practically on Eddie’s lap nibbling on his ear.
“Oh, boy. You’ve got my full attention,” he said, and sped up.
None of us in the rear could have warned him. We were all too occupied. Susie had apparently put her hand between Eddie’s legs, and he wasn’t paying much attention, either. The elderly man who backed out of his driveway was either distracted by something himself or was just careless, but his car shot back directly in our path. Eddie hit the brakes hard, but because his eyes weren’t on the road, he was far too close by then. We weren’t wearing seat belts in the rear, and Noel, who was in a bad angle at the moment, literally flew forward between the two front seats and slammed his head into the dashboard, just as Eddie’s SUV crashed into the rear of the elderly man’s automobile, spinning it around.
The sound was deafening. The airbags popped out in the front, squeezing Eddie and Susie back. Kent and I managed to hold on to each other and just bang into the back of Susie’s seat. Bobbi fell to the floor, twisting her arm but not breaking it.
For a moment, no one spoke. We were all in too much shock. The air around me seemed electric. I felt nauseated and dizzy but held myself together. The echo of the crash still reverberated in my ears. Every bone in my body was still vibrating. I raised myself a little to look out the windshield at the mess. There was a fender on the road, and the entire rear of the other car was bashed in as if it were made of clay. I could see the elderly man was in shock himself but got out of his car and then swayed and fell back against it. The noise of the crash brought people out of his house. I saw an elderly woman and a younger woman hurrying down the driveway to him, the elderly lady screaming. Then Bobbi screamed. She held up her hand to show us there was blood trickling down the side of Noel’s head.
Eddie sat there, gaping down at Noel.
“Hey, Noel, hey,” Eddie said, shaking him a little. Noel didn’t respond.
“He’s unconscious. Do something, Eddie!” Bobbi shouted at him.
He fumbled with his cell phone for a moment and then just got out and screamed for an ambulance. The younger woman hurried back into the house. The elderly lady guided the man, whom I assumed was her husband, back into the car to sit and wait.
Kent started to move Noel.
“Don’t!” I cried, putting my hand on his arm. “Remember what we were told in class when the paramedics talked to us. He might have a spinal injury that you’ll make worse.”
He pulled his hands off Noel as if Noel’s body had turned to molten steel.
“Is he bleeding badly?” Susie asked through her tears.
“No,” Bobbi said, a little calmer. “But he’s not regaining consciousness. Everyone else all right?”
“I hurt my arm, but it’s not broken.”
“We’re okay,” Kent said.
Both Susie and Bobbi started to cry. I didn’t. Maybe I was in a state of shock, but I felt a certain calmness, almost as if I had left my body and was above it all watching, just like some uninvolved observer, detached enough to do and say the right things.
“Put your jacket gently under Noel’s head,” I told Kent.
He nodded, stripped it off, and did as I said.
“Does Eddie have a first-aid kit in the car?” I asked Susie.
“I don’t know.”
She shouted for him. He was now screaming at the old man for being an idiot. His wife started shouting back. I opened the door and got out.
“Stop it!” I shouted at Eddie. “You’re not doing any good. Wait for the police and the ambulance. Do you have a first-aid kit?”
He looked at me, then muttered some curse words, and returned to the car. I got back in, too.
“No, I don’t have a first-aid kit,” he said. “They shouldn’t let people that old drive. He looks like he’s ninety.”
“You weren’t watching the road, Eddie. None of us was,” I said.
He spun around.“Bullshit. The guy just backed out without looking.”
“Forget about it,” Kent said. “Just let Eddie ta
lk to the police,” he told me sternly.
Eddie glared a moment more, and then we all sat there, dazed and still, until we heard the sound of sirens. The patrol car arrived first, and Eddie got out again to talk to the police. One of the officers looked in at Noel.
“Has he been unconscious all this time?” he asked.
Bobbi said yes. He felt for Noel’s pulse and then turned and spoke into the phone on his shoulder. Minutes later, the ambulance arrived. We all got out and watched the paramedics carefully remove Noel from the SUV and get him onto the stretcher to load him into the ambulance. One of the patrolmen began to take down our names, addresses, phone numbers, and information about Noel. While he did that, a tow truck arrived and began to hook up Eddie’s SUV. The elderly man, whose name we learned was Mr. Morgan, was able to drive his car back onto his driveway and out of the street.
“My father’s going to skin me alive if they don’t rule this was the old man’s fault,” Eddie said. “My insurance is high enough as it is. Damn.”
“I think we should be worrying more about Noel,” I said.
No one said anything, but I could see they all agreed. Eddie asked the policemen about helping us follow the ambulance to the hospital. The police told him one of us had to call his or her parents.
“I’ll call my father,” Kent volunteered. “Let me borrow your phone.”
Eddie handed it to him, and Kent moved off to speak privately with his father. I wanted to call Cassie, but I was afraid of what she would say. I would have hated to have my father come out, too.
Kent’s father arrived pretty quickly after the call. He was concerned first about each of us and thought Bobbi should have her arm checked out at the hospital immediately. We all fell into an even deeper silence as Kent’s father drove us to the hospital. He brought Bobbi to the admittance desk, and a nurse took her to an examination room to check her arm. Eddie, Susie, Kent, and I sat in the lobby waiting to hear about Noel. When we saw his parents arrive, we grew even more terrified. Noel’s father came out a while later. He looked very angry.
“What the hell happened?” he asked Eddie.
Despite all his bravado, Eddie began to cry as he explained and blamed the elderly man for shooting out without looking. I heard him tell Noel’s father that he hadn’t had much of a chance to avoid hitting him. He said nothing about Susie distracting him, however. I looked away, ashamed. Noel’s father marched off again.
“What did he say about Noel?” Kent asked.
“He has a concussion for sure. They’re checking to see if his spine was damaged.”
“Oh, no,” Susie said and began to cry harder.
Kent’s father returned to tell us that with the policeman’s help, he had called everyone’s parents. I looked up, terrified. I had hoped somehow to just go home and calmly explain, but I understood why Kent’s father had felt obligated to make the calls. Susie’s parents arrived first. They talked to Kent’s father for a while and then took Susie home. Eddie’s father came without his mother. He was much bigger than Eddie and looked angry enough to beat him right there in the lobby. He spoke to Kent’s father, too, and Kent’s father managed to calm him. He ordered Eddie out to the car and then went to speak with Noel’s parents. Just then, Cassie arrived.
I think I shall never forget her reaction. In contrast to everyone else’s parents, their face pasted over with fear and anger, my sister looked calm and in a strange way satisfied, and I don’t mean satisfied that I was fine. She had an expression on her face that said that everything she believed and told me about other people had been verified. She politely thanked Kent’s father for calling our home, asked about Noel, listened, and then nodded at me.
I turned to Kent, who had kept his head down and his hands over his face all the while. “My sister’s here. I’m going home, Kent.”
He looked up slowly and nodded. “Yeah. I guess we just don’t have luck when it comes to being together,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
He didn’t reply. He looked down again, as if he wanted to avoid looking at Cassie.
“Call me if you hear any more about Noel,” I told him. He nodded but didn’t look up.
“Let’s go home, Semantha,” Cassie said.
I followed her out to her car. She said nothing and looked as if she might not even when we were in the car. When I got in, I said, “It was terrifying, Cassie.”
“Of course it was.” She started the engine and backed out of the parking spot. “Don’t worry. I didn’t tell Daddy. He was asleep on the sofa in the living room when Mr. Pearson called the house, and I just left for the hospital. I’m sure he’s still asleep. We don’t have to say anything until the morning.”
“Why is he asleep on the sofa?” I asked. It wasn’t that late, and I wondered why he wouldn’t be upstairs with Mother.
“He drank too much wine at dinner. We both did, but he drank far more. He needed desperately to relax, so I didn’t say anything or try to stop him. We went into the living room to talk afterward, and when he fell asleep, I simply took off his shoes, got him comfortable, and put a blanket on him and a pillow under his head. He’s better off sleeping there and not with Mother tonight. She’s still obsessing about losing Asa, dreaming she hears a baby cry.”
“Maybe it’s better that she return to the hospital,” I said.
“If she goes back in there, she might never come out, Semantha. How would you like that?”
I started to cry.
“Stop it. That’s all we need now is you bawling like some infant.”
I sucked back my tears. “How terrible, and now this happens.”
“Yes, now this happens. Were you all drinking?”
“No. We had just left the movie and were going to a friend’s home.”
“To do what?”
“I don’t know. Listen to music and stuff.”
“Right, stuff,” she said. She looked at me and nodded. “Maybe you were lucky you were in an accident.”
“Oh, Cassie, how can you say such a thing? Noel might have serious injuries.”
“You could have had serious injuries, too.”
“Right.”
“I don’t mean in a car accident, Semantha. I mean in a different kind of accident, a sexual accident.”
“I wouldn’t,” I insisted.
“If I had a penny for every girl your age who said that and got pregnant, I’d be richer than Daddy.”
I said nothing more. When we arrived home, she had me keep very still. I looked in and saw Daddy asleep on the sofa. It was so strange to me. No matter how drunk he had gotten on his wine, I still couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to be upstairs with Mother. I started to go into the living room, but Cassie seized my arm.
“Don’t disturb him. It took me quite a while to get him relaxed. He might look at your face and immediately see what happened tonight. Just go to sleep, Semantha.”
I continued to look at Daddy. Her fingers grew tighter on my arm until I pulled it away and hurried to the stairs. When she couldn’t see me, I rubbed my arm. She remained downstairs with Daddy, so I went to see Mother. Although the room was dark, I saw she wasn’t sleeping. In fact, she was sitting up. The moment I opened the door, she called, “Teddy? Is that you? Did you hear him?”
How could I tell her Daddy had fallen asleep downstairs and wasn’t coming up? Hear him? Hear who?
“No, Mother. It’s Semantha. How are you?”
She didn’t reply. I walked in farther and saw she had her eyes closed even though she was sitting up. I waited, but she didn’t open them. I didn’t want to wake her, so I slipped out quietly and closed the door softly.
As I was approaching my room, I heard my phone ringing and ran the rest of the way and practically lunged at my phone. It was Kent. I held my breath.
“He doesn’t have any serious spine injury, just the concussion. The head wound wasn’t serious,” Kent said. “We were all lucky.”
When he said
that, I thought about Cassie again saying the same thing but for different reasons.
“Eddie’s lucky there were no witnesses,” Kent continued. “It will surely be considered the old man’s fault. But you were right. Eddie would have had plenty of time to see him back out if he hadn’t been doing other things.”
“I know.”
“You won’t say anything, will you? You might be asked by some lawyer.”
I was silent.
“If you did, no one would talk to you in our school again.”
“What about what’s right, Kent?”
“What about it? The insurance companies will pay anyway, so there’s no sense hurting Eddie any more than he’s hurt.”
“Eddie’s hurt? Noel is in the hospital, and the elderly man is going to be hurt, too, because of all this.”
Kent was silent. “I’ve got to go,” he finally said. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“No, I’m attending my father’s gala store opening in Lexington.”
“Whatever,” Kent said, and hung up.
I held the receiver a moment longer and thought, Cassie was right. Kent Pearson wasn’t good enough for a Heavenstone. The second I thought that, however, I felt guilty. No one should be considered better than someone else because of his or her family’s wealth and history. I told myself that, but I kept hearing Cassie’s warnings and arguments about why we had to remain special.
I didn’t think I could fall asleep. The accident replayed itself in my mind. I was afraid I would have terrible nightmares, but my eyelids had other ideas. They slammed shut almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, and as Daddy might say, they were as tightly closed as the vault in the First National Bank.