The last thing I see are Rian’s teary eyes staring back at me. I let the paper fall from my fingers and I take off running toward Mr. Parson’s land. I leap over the chain-link fence behind Donna Sanders’s house and land on my feet. And I just keep running, past the neighborhood and the church and the old factory at the end of the street. I run faster than I’ve ever run in my life. By car it would take two minutes longer to reach the pasture than running straight through the woods. I can hardly breathe I press on so hard. My heart pounds against my rib cage, trying to burst through it. My calves are as hard as stone, my shoes hitting the ground so fast and so hard that I feel every shock sensation rush into the tips of my toes and up the back of my calf muscles.
I don’t stop running.
Leaping over a small wooden fence, I run past an old shed, and the darkness of the deep woods swallows me whole. I keep on the path, jumping over the same rocks I’ve jumped over since I was a kid. Small low-lying limbs snap me in the face as I run past, not stopping long enough to push them out of my way. The song of the crickets and the frogs and the cicadas rises louder in my ears as if they’re singing to me, urging me on, telling me to hurry.
Tears burn the backs of my eyes and down into my throat. I part my lips and breathe in sharply, forcing the tears back and letting anger and fear and determination push me forward. Because I know that the tears will only slow me down; they’ll rock me to my core and bring me to my knees.
I trip and fall over debris in the forest bed, feeling my ankle twist painfully beneath me. But I pick myself up and keep running. I can feel the solitude of the pasture out ahead. I can faintly smell the stagnant water that always lingers around the bank of the pond. I’m so close. So close. I push myself even harder, veering left and off the path toward the edge of the field. I can see it through a break in the trees. I can see the light of the moon spilling out over the clearing until finally I burst through the last bit of trees and find myself on the outskirts. The water in the pond glistens in the distance. I keep on running toward it, my heart tearing to shreds the closer I get. And then when I finally get there, I stop dead in my tracks as if inches from running into a brick wall.
I feel like I can’t move any part of my body anymore, yet somehow my feet move around in a circle. I see behind me and beside me and the stars above me as if I’m spinning, but I don’t know how I’m moving at all.
My heart has stopped beating. Only my brain is keeping me alive, my mind, frantic with fear and confusion, is frozen in time.
“No…,” I say aloud, yet I don’t recall ever moving my lips.
I step forward. “No…”
My gaze falls downward and for a moment all I can see is the dried grass around my running shoes. But then my head jerks back up and I look at the pond again, at the figure floating on the top of it.
WHY CAN’T I MOVE?! WHY CAN’T I FUCKING MOVE?!
I scream something unintelligible even to me into the night and finally break free from my frozen imprisonment, willing my legs to push forward. My feet hit the water with tremendous force, and my shoes taking on the weight of it nearly knocks me down. Tears pour from my eyes. My hands and legs shake and tremble uncontrollably. My stomach swims in a sickening, churning lake of bile. My mind still frantically searches for my heartbeat but never finds it.
I force my body through the water, pushing myself through foot by foot, feeling all the while as if dozens of hands are grabbing at me from below, trying to pull me under.
“Bray! Brayelle! No! NO!” I cry out.
I’ve never felt so much pain. My body has never endured so much torment. I know this is what Hell must be like.
I nearly collapse.
When I finally make it to her, I grab her, pulling her limp body into my arms. “Bray, no! Please wake up! Please wake up!” I slap her cheeks, squeeze them in my fingers. I close my mouth over hers and exhale deeply several times, but I don’t know CPR. I can’t see through my tears. I can’t breathe, my lungs feel like cement blocks.
Her arms float atop the water out beside her. Her long, soaked hair, seemingly black, moves atop the surface like seaweed. Her face is white and lifeless and hollow. Her eyes are closed, as though she’s only sleeping. I cry out her name again, over and over, errupting with painful, burning sobs, pulling her body closer to mine and crushing her against me.
“God damn it, no!” I wail.
I hear voices shouting somewhere behind me in the pasture, but they’re muffled behind this glass wall my mind has put up around us. I see flashes of bright light bouncing through the darkness and coming toward me, but I can’t look at anything other than Bray lying limp and lifeless in my arms.
I don’t know how I managed and I don’t remember doing it, but I find myself sitting on my knees on the bank of the pond with Bray still clutched against me, her legs splayed out, still floating in the water. I cry into her heavy, wet hair and I squeeze her so tight that I imagine it’ll hurt her and she’ll wake up and tell me to stop.
“Why? Why did you do this? Why did you do this?” I cry out, rocking her back and forth within my arms.
The bouncing dots of light moving toward me become brighter; the shouting voices, louder.
I don’t want to let her go. The voices are telling me to let her go. But I can’t. I just want to die with her.
But then amid the shouts and the chaos and the light I hear someone say, “She has a heartbeat.”
She has a heartbeat.
I fall against the soaked earth and look up into the night sky. Slowly my heart begins to beat again and breath finds its way back into my lungs. But I’m paralyzed. All this time I’m thinking Bray is still wrapped in my arms; that we’re looking up at the stars together. But then I realize I’m lying on my side and I am alone. How long have I been here like this? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Days? I don’t know the difference. I look out into the pasture with my cheek pressed against the wet ground. A single blade of grass stands upright near the corner of my eye and somehow I reach out and move it away. The dark horizon is black on blue, meeting with the earth in the far-off distance. I see tiny green-yellow blinking lights flash off and on lazily in the night. One gets closer. Off. On. Never in the same spot. Off. On.
“Elias?” I hear a man’s voice say with a country accent. “Elias Kline?”
The little firefly floats away.
I turn over onto my back to see Mr. Parson kneeling beside me in his brown boots and plaid short-sleeved shirt tucked into his old-man Levi’s.
“Elias? We have to go now. Can you come with me?” His voice is calm and gruff. The smell of Old Spice fills the space around us.
“We got to go to the hospital,” he says.
I feel trapped within myself. I hear him speaking, but at first I can’t respond. I can’t move from this spot. All I want to do is lie here and die.
“Lemme help you up,” I hear him say, and then I feel his arms fitting underneath mine.
I don’t protest. I don’t have the strength to.
Minutes later I’m in the front seat of Mr. Parson’s old Chevy truck, my head pressed against the glass of the passenger’s-side window. It smells of old, worn-out leather and oil and metal in here.
“Y’know,” I hear him say, but I’m still too weak to raise my head, “I always knew ’bout you and Brayelle Bates sneakin’ into my pond when you were growin’ up. ’Course, I never minded much. Only when I had’ta go out there sometimes an’ pick up after yas.”
I watch the dirt road change to gravel and then to asphalt. All I can think about is Bray. The only face I can see is hers staring back at me. And when I see her lifeless face, her eyes closed, pond water streaming over her eyelids and lips, I force myself to look at her, punishing myself for not being there sooner.
“An’ there was one night,” he goes on, “I was walkin’ in the pasture lookin’ for m’dog and stumbled on you two sleepin’ in the grass. You was curled up like two pups. I just left you alone. Harmless really.” He laughs l
ightly and I can sense him looking over at me. “Though that wife o’mine was afraid you two were doin’ more on our land than jus’ swimmin’. She wanted to tell your folks. But I said she better leave it alone or I’d make her get out there on that damn bush hog and clear the pasture herself.” His laughter rises.
My mind begins to drift farther and I can’t see or hear anything else anymore. Only Bray. I think of every good thing between us and I picture every smiling moment that we shared. Everything. All the way to the hospital. And when the truck pulls up to the doors of the emergency room, I’m too dazed to understand where I am.
Finally, I lift my head from the window. The bright lights outside shine on my face and I look up at the automatic glass doors to peer inside the hospital. But I’m too afraid to go in. I’m too afraid to get out of the truck.
The hospital doors break apart, and Rian steps through them with my mother beside her.
“Oh, Elias,” my mother cries and reaches for me. I don’t even know how the truck door was opened. “I’m so sorry, honey. This is awful! I’m so sorry.” She squeezes her frail arms around me. I don’t even know how I got out of the truck.
I’m afraid to ask her why she’s sorry. I don’t want to know.
Rian’s cheeks shimmer with tears. A tissue is crushed in her hand. She reaches out to hug me, and although I want her and my mother and everyone to leave me alone, I still don’t have the strength to act upon any of my thoughts or intentions.
I’m sitting on a chair in the ER waiting room. I don’t know how I got here, either. All I see is the cream-colored tile floor, wet and dirty from what my drenched running shoes have tracked in. I’m leaning forward with my elbows resting on the tops of my legs, my hands folded together, draped between my knees. Rian and my mother are sitting on either side of me, but I don’t know which. I hate the smell of this place, so sterile and plastic and offensive. The sound of strange beeping machines in the triage room just feet away frays my nerves even further. I hear the squeaking of leather shoes moving across the floor, the intercom popping in the ceiling, and I see the flash of red lights bouncing against the tall glass window from an ambulance that just pulled in.
I feel a hand on my knee, and I recognize it as my mother’s when I place it with her voice.
“You did everything you could do, baby.” The pain in her voice sears right through me. Is she trying to prepare me, or is she hoping to keep me calm?
I keep my eyes trained on the floor.
Time passes, but I can’t tell how much, and a nurse steps into the waiting room and calls Rian’s name.
I’m scared to look up. I know this is the moment, it’s the moment in my life when I will either die from happiness or from pain.
“Are you Ms. Bates’s sister?” the nurse asks Rian.
I still can’t raise my head. My fingers are digging into the back of my scalp, trying their best to penetrate my skull. My right leg shakes uncontrollably, the heel of my foot bounces up and down against the floor in rapid succession. My mother’s hand touches my back.
“Yes…,” Rian answers and I feel her stand up beside me.
There is no air in the room. It’s all being held inside my lungs.
“She’s in stable condition. You can come back and see her now.”
The air bursts from my lungs all at once and I fall from the chair to the floor on my knees. Sobs rack my entire body. I feel even more hands on my back, but I can’t raise my head to see whose they are. I cry so hard into my hands that I almost puke. “She’s alive,” I say out loud to myself. “She’s alive…” My nostrils burn from the stinging tears.
Finally I raise my head to see Rian and my mother standing over me.
“No, I, uh…,” Rian starts to say. I notice her glance at me and then look back at the nurse. “Please let Elias go back first.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Elias
The room is brighter than I imagined. The walls, floor, and ceiling, stark white bathed by fluorescent lights running along the ceiling panels. The nurse pulls a long curtain closed after I’m fully inside the room. The stench of rubbing alcohol and something chemical rises up into my nostrils.
For a moment, I just stare across the short distance of the tiny room and look at Bray, lying upon the elevated bed with white sheets covering her motionless body. Her hair is still drenched, lying against the pillow. Her arms are visible, extending down at her sides. Hospital bracelets have replaced her hemp bracelets on one wrist, and an IV tube is taped to the other. I look at her sleeping face, so soft and calm, as if her body hadn’t just gone through something so horrific. She looks… peaceful.
The nurse makes a few marks on a paper attached to a clipboard and says, “She’s going to be fine. But you should get with her family and discuss what options there are for admitting her. From what I understand, this is Ms. Bates’s second suicide attempt.”
Everything else she says I just hear bits and pieces. Drug overdose. Nearly drowned. If she hadn’t been found sooner…
The nurse leaves me alone in the room with Bray, and I turn off the light shining over her bed. Quietly, I pull a chair around to the side of her bed and I sit. I take her hand into both of mine and tears roll out of me as I lean over, planting my lips on her knuckles. I stay like this for a long time. Just me and Bray, closed off in the solitude of the room. Every now and then I hear faint voices and footsteps moving back and forth outside the room beyond the tall curtain and the glass doors behind it. Bray never stirs. Not once. Her chest rises and falls as she breathes on her own. I wonder what she’s dreaming, if she’s dreaming at all. She looks so peaceful and soft lying there, even though her hair is dirty and wet and her skin is sickly pale. I fall asleep sitting upright in the chair.
Later in the night, they move her to a room and out of the ER. Rian and my mother join me there, all of us sitting around her bed. No one says much, just a few words here and there to any number of nurses that come in to check on Bray through the overnight hours.
My mother decides to leave when Bray’s parents finally show up.
“You call me soon,” my mom says, holding my hands. “Keep me updated and I want you to come home and stay with me for a couple of days.”
I nod. I don’t intend to do that, but this isn’t the time or place to argue with her about it.
She kisses me on the forehead and I hug her tight before she walks past Mr. and Mrs. Bates in the doorway, dressed like they just left church.
I step aside when Mrs. Bates walks quickly over to the side of Bray’s bed and sits down in the chair I had been sitting in for the past couple of hours. She takes Bray’s right hand into hers and kisses her knuckles just like I had done.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you, Brayelle,” she says with tears in her voice.
Mr. Bates looks at me coldly. “You can go now,” he says.
I go into territorial mode in two seconds flat. My teeth clamp together behind my tightly closed lips. It takes everything in me to keep from knocking him on his ass.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I lash out as quietly as I can.
Mrs. Bates sobs into Bray’s hand. Rian stands off to my left, quiet and attentive.
Lines deepen around Mr. Bates’s nose and he rounds his square-shaped jaw, trying to retain his composure. His hands are clasped together down in front of him.
“We’re her family,” he says through his teeth.
“No, I am her family,” I say sharply, cutting off whatever else he had been prepared to say. “And I’m not leaving this room.”
“Please, Dad, just stop,” Rian says, stepping up. “Don’t do this. If anyone belongs here with Brayelle, it’s Elias. And I know you know that deep down.”
“I don’t—”
“Robert!” Mrs. Bates snaps at her husband. Then she lowers her voice and points her bony finger at him. “That’s enough. Elias saved her life.” She glances at me and adds, “From what I understand, more than once. So just back off!??
?
Mr. Bates looks between the both of us, and thankfully he decides to leave it alone for now. He doesn’t approve; he just doesn’t want to make a scene.
The three of them stay for nearly an hour, and Bray remains asleep. I don’t know if it’s from the drugs that were in her system, or from something the hospital gave her, or just pure exhaustion, but whatever it is, I’m starting to wonder if she’ll ever wake up.
They go to leave after talking privately with a nurse outside in the hall. But Mrs. Bates comes back inside the room and kisses Bray’s cheek before turning to me.
“Thank you for being there for her,” she says with a trembling bottom lip.
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” I say in response, and she smiles slimly and walks past, barely touching my shoulder with her delicate fingers.
It pisses me off that they’re leaving before Bray even wakes up. A part of me wants to run out into the hall and tell them everything I’ve always wanted to tell them, that they’re poisonous people who should have done more to help Bray throughout her life. Why are they leaving? I feel like hitting something.
But then Rian comes back into the room and she’s smiling at me softly. “I talked my parents into letting you be alone with her,” she says.
I stand up from beside Bray’s bed and turn to look at her very changed sister. Her dark hair is pulled into a sloppy bun with black hair clamps pinned to the top of her head. She’s wearing the same clothes as before, when she found me outside my apartment. Her gym shorts are stained with hot pink paint. Her white T-shirt is stretched out and dirty.