18 Thoughts (My So-Called Afterlife Book 3) (2 page)

Then the asphalt slapped me awake.

I imagined this was what jumping to your death from a tall building felt like. I tumbled across the pavement and landed facedown in a heap of mud, grass, weeds, rocks. I opened my eyes timidly and stared down at the blood surrounding me. My stomach turned, and I quickly averted my gaze. I needed to focus my mind on anything besides the sight of my blood. I inhaled deeply, hoping to center myself. The field where I landed smelled of smoke, metal, hay, and if I didn’t know any better, freshly turned graves. I sighed. If anything, the scents made my panic worse. I glanced around anxiously, searching for something, for anything that could help me.

Then I saw it: a shiny black spider hung upside down from her carefully crafted web, and she had a red hourglass mark on the underneath of her abdomen. I knew that sign. My time was up. For a brief moment, I wanted to laugh at how an hourglass is filled with sand and how my body felt full of sand, weighted down. My head spilled grains of fear. Time was running out. A small leg of the spider touched my hand, not threateningly, but reminding me to move. Do something.

But I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. So I shifted my gaze instead, forcing myself to take in the scene. A mistake. My blood oozed out of my body faster than a waterfall. The thought made me think of when I visited Ruby Falls in Tennessee one summer. The 145-foot high waterfall was 1120 feet underground, and on our tour, the guide said they still didn’t know where the source of water came from. The memory seemed odd at a time like this, but I didn’t know the source of where all my blood came from, either. Water slipped down my cheeks, completing the metaphor.

I blinked away the tears and peered toward the smoke. Dad’s car looked like one giant, crushed soda can, the wheels still spinning. Suddenly, the vehicle burst into flames. My ejection was a blessing and a curse.

Do I still want to live?
If I survived, I doubted my life would ever be the same.

My thoughts turned to Bo, the kid racing me.

Where is he, where is he, where is he? Please, God, let him be okay.

I prayed he wore his seat belt.

I hadn’t meant to forget that safety feature when I decided to drag race another student home from school today. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for making wise decisions. Being forced to move to a small town three hours away the summer before my senior year sucked, but this? A gazillion times worse. If I didn’t die, my parents just might kill me.

I tried getting up to look for him but winced instead. The shock of the accident receded, and panic set in with the pain, rifling through me now. Every part of me hurt.
My nose must be broken.
Bones must be broken, lots of them.
I cried out as if my heart had broken, too.

How long will it be until I bleed to death?
I looked at my skin, now a red bodysuit, patches of it missing, ripped off by the pavement. Blood covered every single inch of my arms, the scrapes visible through my tattered shirt. I couldn’t get a good view of my legs, but I sensed more blood oozing out there, gaining speed like the car had before I wrecked. I could
feel
that my body was shattered,
feel
wetness on my stomach. Laughed at the absurdity of it all. I spilled my guts to Lindsey, my girlfriend, while we ate ice cream last night, our last date. Now I
literally
spilled my guts.
God, I’m such an idiot!

I cried, wanting to scream for anyone to help, but no sound came. No one came. We were on a deserted highway. No cars rushed past; no screeching sirens heralded our rescue. Instead, wild sunflowers towered like angels, their heads nodding like a cheerful welcoming committee to the afterlife. My heart thudded dully in my aching chest. Only wheezing breaths now. Head spinning. A sour taste in my mouth. Tears behind my closing eyelids. A painful lump in my throat around my bobbing Adam’s apple.

Then a sharp intake of breath.

Fear didn’t grip me. Fear moved me.

Told me to
do something.

Using all my strength, I slid my hand into my jeans pocket, praying my cell phone hadn’t fallen out or broken into a million pieces. Trembling, I dialed 9-1-1. When the operator asked what my emergency was, I opened my mouth to speak but gagged on the words instead. I couldn’t remember who I was, or why I called, or anything.

Frozen, I focused on the fluffy clouds dotting the perfect blue sky, one looking eerily like an angel stretching his hands toward me. A light radiating from the strange cloud blinded me. I squinted and gritted my teeth, fighting a wave of dizziness. Warm blades of grass surrounding my pounding head pressed against my face. Time slowed, and darkness closed in on me like the heavy curtains signaling the end of a performance. I pulled in a fragile breath, praying it wouldn’t be my last but thinking maybe it’d be easier if it was.

A TV played quietly in the corner of my hospital room… not that it mattered, since I couldn’t
see
the screen. Doc said an optic nerve slammed against my brain in the car accident, resulting in some serious damage. The doctors thought my loss of vision to be temporary, but after five full days of total darkness, I was losing hope fast.

Despite all my injuries, I’d taken a three-hour ambulance ride to Grand Haven today because Dad had to start work at his new job here. Apparently, I couldn’t screw up anything else for him.

Day one of being stuck in North Ottawa Community Hospital, and time slowed to a crawl. My drag racing earned me a total of twenty-four stitches across my left leg and abdomen, staples in the top of my head, a broken nose and left arm, temporary blindness—
fingers crossed
—a major blood transfusion, internal injuries that included a battered liver and spleen, eight broken ribs, and deep bruises and cuts covering the entire length of my body.

On top of all that, they’d set me up in a room with some kid who’d been in a coma for two months, so I had nothing to watch and nobody to talk to. Mom did her best to keep me company, but the way I constantly felt her swarming my bed made me nervous. Claiming fatigue, I encouraged her to go set up our new house while I rested. Now, I shoveled the last bite of bland chicken and stale bread into my mouth, trying not to vomit. This was my first taste of real food, if you could call it that, in five days. Up until now, all I had had were ice chips following my emergency surgery, and my IV of course. Already I’d lost eleven pounds. I hated to think of how much weight I’d lose in muscle while wasting away in this hospital room for the next month or so. Inhaling deeply, I hoped to calm myself, but the combo of disinfectant in the air and the way my stitches pulled along my abdomen with the breath almost caused me to vomit all over again.

I heard the door swoosh open.

“Checking in on me already? I think my fever’s gone down a bit now.”

Someone yelped in a high-pitched voice. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t realize Conner had a new roommate.” A girl.

Oh my gosh. New roomie is h-o-t, even with his broken nose all bandaged up.

Hot? “Are you talking about me?”

“Huh? Yes, you’re Conner’s new roommate, I guess?”
Hot? What am I even thinking? My best friend is in a coma! Who cares about Mr. Hottie? He’s probably gay anyway. The good-looking ones always are. Ugh, what’s wrong with me these days? I like Conner.

Sounds like somebody needed a Valium. “Whoa, take it easy. You okay?”

She cleared her throat. “Um, yeah.”

I forced myself to smile, groping for the button on the side of my bed to sit all the way up, in case I needed to make a run for it. “Sorry, I thought you were my mom coming in. I’m Nate, new in town. They transferred me to this hospital today.”

Nate, that has a nice ring to it.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Olga.”

She sounded about my age. I wondered if she was as pretty as she sounded. “Olga has a nice ring to it, too. I’d shake your hand, but obviously, I can’t see a thing with these bandages. I’ve got this temporary blindness thing going on right now.”

And that would be why he’s still talking to me. Oh well, bonus! I can stare at him all day, and he won’t even know I’m a creeper! I hope he can’t hear my heart pounding. Gah! Shut up, Olga. You love Conner, remember?
“Wow, that… stinks.”

Okay, this girl was kind of… different.

“Pretty much sums up the situation. I drag raced another kid on my way home from the last day of school. I’m the one who wasn’t wearing a seat belt and flew through my windshield, but the other kid is the one who died. Can you believe that twist of fate?”

I stared into the darkness, trying not to be swallowed by it. If I hid behind my reckless attitude about Bo’s death, then maybe I wouldn’t feel like I died, too.

And I thought I had problems.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Sounds like you’re lucky to be alive.”

“Am I?”

“Um, yes, I think so,” she said, and I heard her scuff her shoes on the linoleum.

Everyone ignores me on a daily basis, but the one day, one day, I want to be left alone, the nurses give Conner Mr. Talkative as a roomie.

I laughed at the girl’s honesty. “Sorry. My mom says I suffer from verbal diarrhea. But Helen Keller said character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Anyway, you probably want to visit with your friend. I’ll shut up now.”

“Um, yeah, thanks.”
Who do you think you are anyway, the town troubadour?

I let out another laugh. “Ha! That’s a good one. Most people don’t even know what that word means. You must’ve rocked the Verbal on your SAT.”

Now she laughed, nervously.

“Huh? What word? Thanks?”
As if I don’t get enough mocking at school already.

“No, troubadour. Is Grand Haven looking for one of those? Because I had this street performing thing with a guy back home, something we liked to do for fun on the side.”

The room dissolved into silence for a minute.

“I didn’t
say
anything about a troubadour.”

She said the words slowly, cautiously.

“Yes, you did. I heard you loud and clear, even if I can’t see a thing. You’re not one of those people who treat blind people like they’re deaf, too, are you?”

I heard her drag a chair to her friend’s bedside. I felt her looking at me even though I couldn’t see her.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I said that out loud. That sailboat boom must’ve hit my head harder than I thought. I’ve been in such a daze these past two months; I can’t tell if it’s sadness over Conner’s coma, or if I’ve suffered permanent damage myself.”
Just shut up, Olga! Or Mr. Hottie will suggest a nice padded room for you the next time the nurse walks in.

Adrenaline pumped through my veins as she referred to me as Mr. Hottie again, and I decided to call her out on my new nickname, even though I knew I should keep my lips sealed. “You think I’m hot?”

“What? No!”

My body tensed. “So I’m ugly?”

“Uh.” She cleared her throat. “I think I’m gonna read to Conner.” I heard her fumbling through a bag.

“What did you bring to read?” For some reason, I couldn’t stop talking to her.

“It’s a novel by Timothy Zahn called
Dark Force Rising.
It’s the second volume of a Star Wars trilogy he wrote. I finished reading volume one to Conner last week.”

“Hmm, Star Wars, eh? I don’t know why, but I pictured something completely different, like some bodice-ripping cover.”

She snorted. “Oh great. So your first impression of me is I’m some bimbo incapable of stringing more than three words together without giggling?”

Although I have to admit, I’d pick up a bodice-ripping novel if this guy was half-naked on the cover. Oh my gosh, why did I think that? What’s wrong with me? Conner’s not even out of the woods yet, and I’m crushing on the new kid in town?

I expertly felt around for my glass of water and took a sip, trying to figure out this chick. “Why do you keep talking about me, to me, in the third person?”

“Huh?”

“You said you’re crushing on the new kid in town, and I know I can’t see and all, but the only new kid in here is me, right?”

She sucked in a breath. “What? Are you high on hospital meds or something? Is this some kind of twisted joke?”

Olga sounded as confused as I was.

I took a deep breath. “Possibly, and no.”

“Look, I don’t know why you’re messing with me, but you’re starting to freak me out.”

Freaking her out? What did
I
do? Goose bumps broke out all over my body.

I angled my face in her direction and tried to sound sincere because it was clear to me now I dealt with one huge batch of crazysauce. “Sorry. I’ll really shut up now.”

Yeah, you do that, and don’t forget to take your dose of Ritalin tonight! Oh great. I need to pee. But if I walk down the hall, there’s the chance of running into Toe-touch Tammy visiting her dad, and I already had enough of her at school today. Thank God it was the last day of actual classes. Ugh, I should not have drunk that second cup of coffee from the hospital cafeteria on the way in. I really do need to get a grip on my caffeine addiction.