Different Roads (6 page)

"Here they come, hang on,"
Seth told me just seconds before he eased off the gas. He jerked the wheel to
the right and jammed on the brakes. Brad's truck rocketed past in a blur
outside Seth's window. I craned my neck around to look out the back glass for
Damon's Harley. He was coming fast. As soon as Damon went by, Seth cut back
onto the road and gunned it. The wheels started to spin in the wet grass and he
reached down to engage the four wheel drive. Soon the tires found traction and
we were in pursuit.

My skin went clammy and my stomach
turned inside out. "The bridge..." I managed to choke out. "He
always forgets about the bridge."

Seth shot me a worried look and reached
over to squeeze my ice cold hand. "They're almost there now."

As soon as the words left his lips I
watched a lone tail light veer off the road and come to a stop. I leaned
forward in the seat, as close to the windshield as the seatbelt would allow. Through
the foggy mist I stared, horrified, at two taillights hovering at an unnatural
angle to the roadway. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" My hand flew to my
mouth, "Stop!"

Seth glanced in his rearview mirror and
eased off the gas. I unbuckled the seatbelt and flung the door open before we
came to a complete stop. Already in a dead run toward the wreckage, I could see
as steam rose off the front of what was left of Brad's mangled Ford and the acrid
smell of gas and antifreeze hung thick in the damp air making my eyes water.

Damon was frantically trying to get the
driver's door of Brad's truck to open, but the impact against the bridge had
smashed the front bumper of the truck almost back to the windshield and the
doors were as good as welded shut.

I screamed and Damon yelled at me,
"Stay the fuck back! Someone call 9-1-1!"

Seth wrapped his arms around my waist
and held me in a bear hug. Even though I clawed, pounded, kicked, thrashed, and
called him every vile thing I could think of, his grip never loosened.

The rain, now coming down in monsoon fashion,
washed my tears away while I heaved my guts out beside the road. Blood coursed
through my veins and pounded behind my ears in a deafening roar.

It was about that time my knees decided
to dissolve into mush and the edges of my vision went black just before I went
limp in Seth's arms.

When
I awoke, Shelley was at the foot of my bed wrapped up in her pink fuzzy robe
with matching slippers. Seated in my Grandma Carter's old rocker, she stared
out the window. Her face was devoid of all emotion and the chair rocked back
and forth almost imperceptibly.

            Enough
daylight still filtered into the room through the blinds to distinguish night
from day but I didn't know exactly what day it was or how I came to be in my bed.
The last thing I remembered was blacking out after Brad's accident.

            My
eyes ached and my head throbbed. I rolled onto my side and let out a soft moan.
Shelley stopped rocking and turned toward me, her blank expression replaced by
concern. "My head is killing me. I guess I must have had more to drink
last night than I thought."

            "Last
night?" Her eyes narrowed into a frown, "Do you know what day it is?
How long you've been asleep?"

            I
pushed myself upright and wrapped my arms around my legs. "Sunday?"
She stood and walked silently out of the room. For some reason, it felt like
she was mad at me for something. Did she blame me for Brad's crash?

            Within
a few minutes, she returned carrying a glass of water and handed me two pills,
"Take these," she told me. "They'll help ease your headache."

            I
swallowed the pills and asked, "What's going on Shell? You're like a
walking zombie."

            Silently,
she stared at her hands folded in her lap. She was quiet for so long, I wasn't
sure she was going to answer the question. Finally, she turned toward me and a
single tear slid from her swollen red eyes and rolled slowly down her cheek.
"How much do you remember?"

            The
skin between my eyebrows creased into hard lines and I pressed my palms into my
eyes, trying to ease the stabbing pain behind them. I searched frantically
through the dark corners of my mind, for something, anything to help shed light
on what had happened. "I remember there was an accident. I remember Seth
holding me back, trying to keep me away from the wreckage. Damon couldn't get
Brad's truck door open. That's about where things go hazy on me."

            Shelley
walked over and grabbed a box of tissues from off the floor next to where she'd
been sitting. She took a few and tossed the box onto the bed beside me. "It's
3:00 in the afternoon," she blew her nose gently. "Tuesday."

            My
eyebrows rose in confusion, "Tuesday? What happened to Sunday and
Monday?" I whispered. "Brad's okay though, right?"

            "Jaq..."
She glanced at me for a split second before picking at the fuzz on her robe,
"I'm sorry sweetie. Brad didn't make it."

            "What?"
I screamed and flung the tissue box as hard as I could across the room with
what little strength I had left. "You're lying. He can't be dead. He just
can't be!"

            "I
wish I were lying," She crawled under the covers beside me and wrapped her
arms around my shaking shoulders, "I'm sorry Jaq. So, so sorry."

            I
fought to stay awake, going over the shattered fragments of my memory but my
body had other ideas. I traced my blue butterfly tattoo while sobs wracked my
body. Whatever pills Shelley had given me to swallow began to creep into my
bloodstream. I suddenly felt incredibly heavy all over. My eyelids fluttered closed,
and I drifted into another fitful round of sleep.

            Friday
afternoon Shelley walked into my room and said, "Brad's visitation is in a
couple hours."

            "I'm
not going. I can't go," I turned to stare out the window at the colorless
day. "It's my fault he's dead. I can't go and face all his friends."

            Shelley's
eyes widened a split second before taking on a hard glint. She walked over to
the bed and yanked the covers off of me. "Jacqueline Carter, you get your
sorry ass out of this bed right now. You
are
going to the visitation
tonight and you
will
go to the funeral tomorrow if I have to drag you
there kicking and screaming. Nobody. Blames. You. Stop feeling sorry for
yourself. Brad's friends? They're your friends too and no one thinks his
accident was your fault."

            My
mouth opened and I blinked. It takes a lot to make Shelley mad. Lucky me, I'd
just cracked the code. I reached for the blankets and she snatched them out of
my reach just before she heaved them across the room. "But..." I
stammered.

            "No,"
she held up her hand, warning me to stop talking. "I mean it. I'm giving
you about two seconds and your feet had better be hitting this floor. You march
your butt down the hall to the shower right now or I am going to get Tim up
here to carry you."

            I
stared disbelievingly at my best friend, "Shell?"

            "One.
Two," she stomped to the doorway, "Tim!" she shouted down the
hall.

            "Alright,
alright. I'm up," I shot her a wounded puppy pout as I shoulder past her muttering,
"Who are you and what did you do with my best friend?"

            Like
a child having a temper tantrum, I stomped and slammed and kicked and stomped
some more while I showered and dressed to go pay my respects. Shelley had dug
through my clothes and managed to find something for me to wear. It was the
black dress I had bought specifically to wear to Grandma Carter's funeral. It
was now my official dress of mourning. I decided after Brad's funeral I'd burn
it since I was certain I'd never want to wear it again.

            Shelley
waited for me in the hallway. She smiled weakly when our eyes met and I
narrowed my eyes into a glare to reinforce the message that I was not pleased
about this decision. I loved Brad like a brother, but going to his funeral was
going to hurt and I was a wimp. I felt incredibly guilty about the accident. If
he hadn't been trying to protect my dumb ass, I wouldn't have gotten mad at
him. My anger fed his anger which in turn had led him to make a stupid
decision.

            I
wasn't nearly as mad at Shelley as I was at myself, but I felt the need to take
my frustration and pain out on somebody, she just happened to be a prime
candidate by being in the same room.

It
had been two weeks since the accident and one week since they buried him. I was
still finding it difficult to deal with day to day activities.  I crawled out
of bed, still feeling numb, and shuffled down the hall to the bathroom. The
face staring back at me from the mirror was thinner and the purplish circles
beneath my eyes reminded me of a makeover gone horribly wrong. I barely recognized
the face as my own and thought how eerily similar it was to the one a few years
ago that had made me swear off drugs.

            I
dug out the least offensive smelling dirty sweats I owned from the laundry
basket and turned the water on to the shower as hot as I could stand it -- a
couple degrees cooler than Mordor and climbed in. It was my first shower since
before the funeral. I winced several times as my hands made contact with fading
bruises of all shapes and sizes which seemed to cover me from head to toe.

After I got out of the shower and
dressed, I found the black dress I'd worn to Brad's funeral. I grabbed the
dress, along with a lighter, and marched out the front door. I tossed the dress
into a metal garbage can and torched it. It disintegrated within seconds
leaving bits of charred remains and curly black wisps of smoke that floated up
into the damp morning air. The Mourning dress had been officially cremated.

Somehow, in the fog of my depression,
burning that dress made me feel as though I'd fought the cruel monster of death
in hopes that no one else close to me would ever die again. How could they if I
didn't have anything to wear to their funeral? Lame rationalization, I know.

Shelley walked barefooted up behind me
to join me in my strange ritual, "Feel better now?"

"No," I said and smiled
wearily. "But it's as good a place to start as any."

            A
sad smile turned up the corners of her mouth but it did little to erase the
expression of concern coming from her green eyes. She reached for my hand,
"Come inside and get something to eat."

            I
nodded. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had anything to eat and on cue, my
stomach grumbled on the way back into the house.

            "Why
do I feel like there are whole chunks of time missing from my brain?" I muttered
and pushed the scrambled eggs around on my plate. "And the bruises? Why am
I covered with bruises? I feel like somebody beat the shit out of me."

            Shelley
slid into the chair across the table from me, "You don't remember?"

            "After
the accident, other than the funeral, I don't remember much of anything,"
I sighed.

            She
nodded and tucked a piece of my damp hair behind my ear, "You were pretty
fucked up sweetie. We were all worried crazy about you."

            "
We
?"
I asked.

            "Seth
and Damon have both been by to see you every day. So have all the guys from
your school." She chewed on the skin around her thumb in between words.
"They'll all be pretty happy to know you're feeling better."

            I
stared at my half eaten plate of food and pushed it away from me. "Maybe
you should start from the beginning and fill me in on what I don't remember.
Which is pretty much everything."

            Shelley
reached across the table and squeezed my hand, "Okay."

            Two
hours and three Diet Mountain Dews later, I was still trying to wrap my head
around everything Shelley had told me. She said that by the time the Air Care
ambulance was able to land; emergency responders on the ground had used the
Jaws of Life to extract Brad from the wreckage. She'd ridden with Seth to drive
me home, and when I woke up in the truck he had to pull off the side of the road
to try and restrain me. Apparently, I was hysterical and threatened to jump from
the moving truck several times.

            They
finally got me calmed enough that they were convinced I wouldn't leap from the pickup
while we drove down the highway.  Shelley said I was only semi-rational and
rather than drive me straight to the house, she suggested they take me by her
parent's house. Shelley's dad is a doctor at a local psychiatric hospital and
is used to dealing with crazy people who are either trying to hurt themselves or
others. She reasoned that since I was as close to crazy as anyone she'd ever
seen that maybe her dad could give me something to help calm me down.

            I
was given a shot of something pretty strong, and it worked immediately to turn
me into an incoherent zombie. He wrote a prescription for a strong sedative and
Seth carried me out to his pickup.