What I Didn''t Say

  I couldn’t help but smile, my entire body finally relaxing.

  “But you might want to talk to your mother about it sooner than later. It might take her a while to warm up to the idea.”

  I stuffed more steak into my mouth. “Thanks, Dad.”

  4 hours since winning the Homecoming game

  10 months ‘til Air Force

  Out of the thirty-seven seniors at Orcas High School, every single one of them had been at the homecoming football game. It was a Friday night, the sky was cloudy, threatening to rain, a picturesque September day on Orcas Island.

  The Vikings had crushed Tree Hill Baptist High, thirty-two to eighteen. I had scored four of those touchdowns. And I celebrated with twenty-four of my senior classmen.

  “Jake!” Carter shouted from across the bonfire. “Catch!”

  I barely got my hands up to block the Budweiser can from hitting me square in the face.

  “And that’s how we won the game today!” Carter cheered, the rest of the crowd cheering and shouting with him. I shook my head and laughed as I watched Carter grab another beer from the cooler at his feet and chuck it at Rain.

  The entire football team was at the party and if we got caught we were screwed for the rest of the season. I could think of nothing worse than having the cops roll up. We were on track to win districts this year. I had told Rain and Carter they were stupid for throwing this party, and yet there I was, drinking with the rest of them.

  Ignoring my mother’s voice in the back of my head, the one that was always there whenever I was doing something I knew I shouldn’t, I popped the top of the can. Carter joined at my side and slapping his hand on my shoulder said, “Race you to the bottom?”

  “Chug,” Rain started chanting. “Chug! Chug!”

  “It’s on,” I taunted. Not hesitating, my lips met the lip of the can and tipped it back.

  The alcohol burned my throat as it went down, and everything in me wanted to cough it back up. But I’d never admit this was only the third beer I’d ever had in my life. The one I’d finished not three minutes ago was my second.

  Crushing the can in my fist as the last drop slid down my throat, I threw it at the ground and raised my arms in triumph. Carter coughed as he choked on his, laughing.

  “That’s how we do it, Hayes!” Rain egged on, beating on my back. “Maybe you aren’t as innocent as we all believed you to be.”

  “Shut up, man,” I shoved Rain, laughing with the rest of the crowd.

  We’d all flocked to Rain’s house out in Deer Harbor, nearly at the end of the world on Orcas Island. The Jones’ had owned the twenty acres of ocean front property since the early nineteen hundreds, which was lucky. Rain’s hippy parents would never have been able to afford a place like this on their own.

  And lucky for the student body of the high school, they were down in Portland for some sort of hippy convention about saving salmon, or ferns, or the cross-eyed, two toed crane, or something granola like that.

  None of us would ever admit it, but parties like this happened all the time on the island. There was nothing to do on an island so tiny, so parties with red plastic cups and glimmering glass pipes were the frequent solution.

  “I seriously can’t believe you guys invited all of these people,” River said as she stopped at Rain’s side, giving him the look of death. It was hard to believe they were twins, with River’s nearly black long hair, and Rain’s nearly white-blond hair. They couldn’t have looked less alike.

  “And yet I see you have a red plastic cup in your hand,” Rain taunted her. “Quit being a kill joy.”

  “Whatever,” she said with a very dramatic roll of her eyes. “Jake, don’t get so drunk you can’t make it to the dance tomorrow. I spent way too much on my dress for you to get too wasted to not wake up tomorrow. I won’t be stood up.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I saluted her. She winked at me once and walked back toward their borderline historic house.

  “It is a little weird that she asked him to the dance, right?” Carter asked, unabashedly staring after River. Carter tended to get a little depressed when he smoked weed.

  “Dude, when are you finally going to grow a pair and just ask her out?” Rain asked, his voice exasperated. I just shook my head, everything starting to feel a little fuzzy. I’d heard this argument more times than I wanted to count.

  “River would never go out with me,” Carter said in a nearly wistful voice. “She doesn’t go out with anyone.”

  I wondered if I was the only one who knew why she didn’t go out with anyone. River would never admit she batted for the other team. I only found out when I happened to see her holding hands with another girl when I was off-island once. I’d been weirded out for weeks. Eventually River figured out I knew. After a very awkward conversation, I agreed to keep her secret, and the two of us went back to being friends as usual.

  And I had agreed to take her to the dance when River blackmailed me with Samantha. She knew I’d never have the balls to ask Sam, so I either take River, or she spilled the beans about how I really felt about Sam.

  Girls fought so dirty.

  The first drops started to fall from the sky, the clouds above us thick and heavy. It would have been pitch black outside had it not been for the raging bonfire. You didn’t get to experience that kind of darkness unless you lived in a remote place like Orcas.

  “We all know it isn’t hard to beat Hill in a drinking match,” Blake Shaw said as he lumbered over to us. He was easily the most built kid in the school, dark as night, and probably six foot five. “You ready to take on the Shaw?”

  “The Shaw, huh?” I challenged my teammate. “Bring it.”

  I took the can Blake offered and popped the top. Rain counted us down.

  I hadn’t stood a chance.

  “And that’s how the Shaw does it!” Blake bellowed, hurling his empty can into the fire, raising his arms into the air and turning in a circle. The girls all cheered for him. Blake struck a pose, flexed his biceps and kissed each of them.

  “Who wants a piece of the Shaw?” he called, nodding and winking at them.

  “Wow,” Carter shook his head. “Is he for real?”

  We all laughed, each grabbing another beer from the cooler. I watched as Norah Hamilton, the only girl with enough money to supply the booze, eyed me from across the bonfire, and slowly made her way toward us.

  “Watch out Jakey-boy,” Rain teased. “The tigress is on the prowl again.”

  “Shut up,” I hissed. I felt my stomach clench, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t from the alcohol.

  “Hi, Jake,” Norah practically purred as she swished her dark brown hair off of her shoulder. Her French manicured fingernails wrapped tightly around her plastic cup. “So when are you going to take me flying in that lawyer boss’s plane?” She bit her bottom lip in a way that made my hindered brain ache, and not in a good way.

  “Brent’s pretty strict about who I’m allowed to take up in his plane with me,” I half lied. Once the liability release was signed, Mr. Carol let me take whoever I wanted up.

  “Come on,” she said, reaching out for the front of my jacket. “You’ve got to be the youngest pilot ever. You need to take me up before you leave for the Air Force.”

  “Uh,” I struggled to make my brain form an answer. I really hoped the alcohol wouldn’t make me say something I regretted. I probably should have listened to Mom’s voice in the back of my head. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  “You really shouldn’t run off to the Air Force,” Norah said as she stepped a little closer, her nose only inches away from mine. “You know a lot of people die in the services, don’t you? It would be a shame if that pretty face didn’t live past its nineteenth birthday.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, trying to disentangle myself from Norah. My speech was starting to sound just a little slurred. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Be careful up in those skies,” she practically whispered next to my ear. She pressed her perfectly glossed
lips to my cheek just for a moment, her hand dropping to my belt.

  “Uh! Okay, got it!” I shouted as I jumped away from her. She simply winked and walked back to her pack of friends.

  I felt a shiver run through me that I didn’t like.

  “Oh, Norah the Whora has her sights on Jakey-boy!” Rain said just a little too loudly, high-fiving Carter.

  “Could you guys just shut up?” My words were slurring a little more.

  “Chill out, Hayes,” Carter said, clasping me on the shoulder. “We all know you’re saving yourself for Samantha.”

  I got quiet at the mention of Samantha’s name, a hard knot tying itself around my chest. Samantha was one of the few students who weren’t at the party. She was probably at home studying.

  “No defense,” Carter said, squeezing my shoulder again. “It must be true love.”

  “Shut up,” I said again, letting myself sink to the ground. It felt a bit like I was standing on a dock down at the marina instead of solid ground.

  “Just say it, my friend,” Rain said, sitting on the ground next to me, another can between his hands. “You’ll feel better if you get it out.”

  My drunken brain didn’t even register or care that he was still mocking me. “I’ve been trying to drop the hints since the beginning of last year, but does she respond? No!” I said just a little louder than I should have.

  “Oh Samantha!” Rain sang out in a terrible mock country voice. Carter slipped his phone out of his pocket and pointed it in our direction. I didn’t even care that he was recording this.

  “Oh Samantha,” Rain continued. “Why isn’t Jakey-boy good enough? With those beautiful green eyes and hair like sweeping… chocolate?” he held the note out long and dramatic.

  “Oh Samantha,” I joined Rain, singing in harmony. “I’ve been watchin’ you fo so long,” I sang. “Waitin’ for you to come around. Cause don’t you know Samantha, that I love you?” I hadn’t even realized that I’d fallen onto my back until I was looking up at Carter and his recording cell phone. “I love you Samantha,” I said with a lazy smile, straight into the phone.

  “And sent,” Carter said, sliding it back into his pocket. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket as I received the video Carter had just recorded.

  “Okay, lover boy,” Rain said, pulling me back to my feet. “It’s time to go tell her. This is just sad.”

  “Tell her?” I said as Rain pulled my arm around his shoulder to keep me on my feet. “Tell who what?”

  “Tell Samantha just how much you love her,” Carter said as he put his arm around me from the other side.

  I hesitated, my foggy brain processing their words. It sounded like a pretty good idea. “Okay!” I declared, standing up a little straighter. “Okay! I’m gonna’ tell her! Tonight! Right now!”

  “Yeah!” Rain and Carter both cheered. Carter reached into his pocket for his keys. “I’ll drive!”

  “Aren’t you drunk too?” I tried to be reasonable in an unreasonable state. “And high?’

  “Not nearly as drunk as you,” Carter laughed. “And I’m not that high.”

  The three of us called good-bye to the party and made our way to Carter’s rust-bucket of a truck. The doors squealed painfully as they were forced open. Carter slid into the driver’s seat, Rain scooted into the middle, and I followed him in and slammed the door shut. Reaching into his pocket, Carter pulled his cell phone out and set it on the dash.

  The engine just squealed when Carter tried to start it up.

  “Come on, you piece of crap!” Carter yelled uselessly at it as he slammed his fist on the dash. His phone jumped violently. “We’re on an important mission!”

  A moment later it turned over.

  “Where does she even live anyway?” Carter asked as he worked his way back to the road. “I’ve never been to Samantha’s house.”

  “Me neither,” I said, leaning my forehead against the cool glass. It felt good. “Some place at the end of Enchanted Forest Road.”

  And so the three of us set out, driving down the winding road. Carter turned up the radio. I squeezed my eyes closed. Everything sounded too loud.

  Behind my eyes I could picture Samantha, her dark hair, her warm brown eyes, her tiny nose, and perfectly smooth skin. I had loved her since I saw her the first day of our freshmen year. I’d developed crushes on other girls, sure, over the last three years. But it always came back to Samantha Shay. Always.

  I’d just never had the guts to tell her.

  Samantha was intimidating. She was smart, by far the smartest girl in our school. She was confident. She was an athlete, at least until this year, when her school schedule became too crazy to try and balance sports and classes.

  And during an English class last year, she and Mr. Morrison got into a debate. We’d been reading some book that I no longer remembered, and one of the issues was about love. Samantha’s argument was that she didn’t believe in love.

  No one in the class doubted she really didn’t believe in love after she finished her argument.

  Thus I had never told her.

  But that was going to change tonight. As Rain had put it, I was finally going to grow a pair.

  Just as we went around a sharp bend in the road, Carter’s phone started blaring some rap song. At the exact same time, it slid off the dash and onto the floor.

  “Got it,” Carter and Rain said at the same time, both reaching toward the floor.

  “Hey,” I muttered as I squinted out the front window. “Watch out for that deer.”

  “What?” Carter mumbled, briefly glancing at the windshield before turning his eyes back to the floor of the truck.

  “Watch out for that deer!” I yelled. I saw its eyes grow wide and white as we barreled towards it. Reaching over for the steering wheel, I jerked it to the right, narrowly missing the animal.

  Carter slammed on the breaks just after I jerked the steering wheel. The back end of the truck skidded, turning us in a half circle. The truck swerved wildly and there was a loud pop as the front passenger tire burst. For one second the truck was airborne. There was the sickening sound of metal crunching and the next second it felt as if my head had been ripped off.

  Blackness crept in on the edges of my vision as a shaky hand rose to the source of the pain. Glass was embedded into my arms and face, but that wasn’t what really hurt. My fingers met cold steel. I traced my fingers up the metal.

  And then my fingers met my own bloody flesh, just a few inches under my chin. The steel and my skin were connected.

  I passed out.

  ? hours/days since…

  Even though I couldn’t see her, I could smell her. Not the girl I really wanted to see, but my sister Jordan. I always told her she wore too much perfume. It wasn’t that it smelled bad, she just wore too much.

  My eyes struggled to open, my entire body sure Jordan was going to jump on me, or dump a glass of ice cold water over my head to wake me up. She was evil like that sometimes. But for some reason my eyes didn’t want to open. In fact, my entire body seemed pretty unwilling to do anything.

  “Hey, Mom,” I heard Jordan say. “I think he’s starting to wake up.”

  I heard the sound of shuffling feet, accompanied by beeping and a bunch of other sounds I didn’t recognize. A sliver of light appeared as my eyelids struggled to open.

  It felt weird when I breathed.

  “Jake,” I heard the familiar sound of my mom’s voice. “Jake, are you awake?”

  I tried to tell her that I was, but it felt like my throat was swollen to the point of almost being sealed shut.

  “Mom,” I heard my other younger sister, Jamie, hiss. “He can’t now, remember?”

  My eyes slid open just a little more, seeing my mom’s face blanch. She was sitting on the side of whatever surface I laid on and it took me a moment to realize that I wasn’t lying on my own bed. The lights above me were all wrong.

  I finally registered the other faces in the room, all eight of them. My big,
crazy family. Three brothers and three sisters, and both parents.

  A stream of tears rolled down Mom’s face as she looked at me, my eyes now fully open.

  I would have panicked at that sight. Mom didn’t cry. But then I realized where I was.

  I was in a hospital.

  A hospital room that was decorated with seashells and cartoony sea creatures.

  A small whimper escaped Mom’s throat and she reached for Dad’s hand. Johnson Hayes, father to all seven of the children in the room, just stared at me in a maddening way.

  I opened my mouth to ask “what’s going on?” when searing pain ripped through my throat. My hands shot to it, but my entire body screamed.

  “Don’t move, Jake,” Jordan cried, her hands flashing to pull my hands away. My fingers brushed what felt like gauze at my throat before she pulled my hands back. “Don’t.”

  On instinct, I went to ask “what happened?” when the pain ripped through me again. My eyes turned frantically to my family.

  Something had happened to me. The last thing I remembered was my stupid drinking haze, and something about a deer.

  Having everyone stare at me, not saying a word was going to drive me insane. I felt panic eating at me, a kind of terror I had never felt before. And it hurt too much to ask what had happened.

  So I simply pointed at my oldest brother, the oldest child in our family, John. Giving me a meaningful look, John cleared his throat.

  “You were in a car accident, Jake,” John said with a husky voice. “Do you remember that?”

  I tried to make my frantic thoughts focus for a second, to think back to the last thing I remembered. I was sure it was the deer. And then I remembered the sound of the tire popping. And the feeling of steel too close to my skin.

  I nodded.

  “Carter was trying to find his phone or something, he said you jerked the wheel so he wouldn’t hit a deer. Apparently he was drunk, guess you all were,” John’s voice hardened a little in anger. I felt my heartbeat quicken.

  “John,” Mom managed to get out. “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until the doctor gets back to tell him?”