Figment (17 page)

He glances over, but his face is serious, not smiling as I expect. “To remember me by,” he says. I laugh at what I think is a joke, but he is anxious as he stares through the windshield. His foot presses the accelerator harder, and I watch the houses outside give way to open black countryside.

“Davis, slow down!” I cling to the door handle, and even as I live the dream, I sense my aware-self coming into being. I know now that I am dreaming and that it is the same dream I’ve had a thousand times before.

Davis is already nervous, already checking his rearview mirror. “Davis, what is it?” I ask. “What’s wrong?” Cars approach and pass us steadily in the opposite lane, and, each time, he flinches as if he expects a collision.

“Look, Zoe. There’s just one thing.” He stares out at the road, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “If anything happens to me, remember that risk is your ticket out of here. Swear to remember. Risk.”

The moment he says the words, a jolt of recognition shoots through my aware-self. Risk. Could that be the password? Why else would he make me swear to remember? I have it. At last, I have it.

As I dream on, the car enters the long, flat stretch of road approaching the hills. I know the crash is coming. I sense myself waking up—for an instant, I feel the rough wool of my blanket. But I have to see this through. I fight against the waking. I draw myself deeper into the dream.

We drive rapidly toward the hills, and, once again, I watch Davis tell me about the Dubai ring, about the hacking scheme. He checks his mirror. I beg him to slow down. Then the car engine revs as we climb into the hills. Black and steep, the slopes rise on either side.

My aware-self knows what is coming, of course, and I brace myself as the car skids around the turns. I scream at Davis to slow down. He does not listen. And then I see the curve approaching, grope for the door handle as I have so many times before. That boneless spinning of the steering wheel, the sickening crunch of the guardrail, so like the crunch of bones. Then we are flying through the air. I wait to black out.

But to my shock, I don’t. Instead, we hit the ground with a bone-shattering crash, the car rolling over and over. I grab at the walls, the ceiling, the world flipping upside down. Davis! I try to scream, but my voice doesn’t work. The car comes to rest against a tree. My legs are stuck under the dashboard, and my body is bent over the console. Something soft is pinned beneath me. Everything is very quiet. I claw at my seat belt, barely able to see from the blood streaming down my face. Whimpering, I push myself upright. I can’t feel anything from the waist down, and for a heart-stopping moment, I wonder if I am paralyzed. Then bolts of pain shoot through my legs, and I almost scream. Where is Davis? It’s so dark. I can’t see. I swipe away the blood.

Davis is lying half through the windshield, the upper half of his body resting on the crumbled hood of the car, his legs bent grotesquely over the steering wheel. His seat belt hangs slackly beside him. “Davis, Davis, Davis,” I moan. “Davis, oh please, please.” I yank myself from under the crushed dashboard, sending new shockwaves of pain through my body. Panting, big black spots dancing in front of my eyes, I crawl out through the shattered windshield onto the hood. Davis is lying very still, with his upper body bent away from me. “Davis,” I whisper. I put my hand on his back, shake him. His head rolls loosely on his neck toward me. I see his face for the first time.

His eyes are filled with blood.

I scream, though my voice must be only a whimper. Then I see it—his head—and my screams grow even louder.

His skull is cracked and flowing with dark blood. I see bright flecks of bone amid the mess. He’s lying still. So still.

911. I have to call 911. Get help. My hands still work, and I manage to fumble my phone from my pocket. Oh God, please let it work. Please.

My breathing ragged, I dial.

“911, what is your emergency?” The dispatcher’s emotionless voice is like a lifeline in the dark.

“Oh, thank God, thank God, please help us,” I sob.

“Ma’am, what is your emergency?” she repeats.

“We’ve been in a car accident. The car, it slipped off the road.”

“What is your location?” she asks.

“Great Bend Road, I think. Please, please hurry! My boyfriend, he’s not responding.”

I could hear clicking on the other end, as if she was typing.

“Can you try to talk to him, ma’am?” She sounded so calm.

“He’s unconscious, I—I think he’s dead.” The words slip from my mouth, and, in an instant, I realize they are true.

I have known all along.

“No!” I wail. “No! No!” I drop the phone.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?” the dispatcher says faintly from the bottom of the car. But I barely hear her.

“Davis, please, talk to me. Please. Please.” Over and over, I plead. But he is silent and still.

Sirens wail up the mountain road. Strong white lights flash over the twisted shell of the car. “Here they are, Jim,” a man says. Two of them. Metal screeches, and then strong hands are delicately feeling my head, neck, and back. “Can you hear me? What’s your name?” the paramedic asks. Behind him, a firefighter is shining a powerful flashlight over the car wreckage.

“Zoe,” I whispered.

“Let’s get you out of there, Zoe.” I’m carefully disentangled and lifted from the wreckage. On the other side of the car, I can hear others working to free Davis. A stretcher is placed beneath me, and I lie back on it.

“This will help with the pain until we get you to the ER,” one of the paramedics says, and I feel the sting of a needle in my arm.

“Please, is my boyfriend okay?” Maybe I’m wrong, I hope feverishly. Please God, let me be wrong.

Then they carry Davis on a stretcher around the car. What I already know is confirmed.

The sheet is pulled up and over his head.

No! My hands fly up in front of my face to ward off the sight. “No! Davis! Davis!” I moan as they load me into the back of the ambulance.

My eyes flew open. My face was wet with tears, and my chest was heaving. He was dead. He’d been dead all along. I shoved the side of my hand into my mouth and bit down hard, drawing blood, willing myself to not scream aloud. Willing myself not to open my mouth and scream hysterically, over and over, just shriek huge, cleansing screams until the image of Davis’s destroyed head was gone from my mind.

I rolled over, clutching my pillow to my stomach, feeling the horror and grief crash over me in a giant, heart-tearing wave. My beautiful, golden Davis, destroyed like a piece of roadkill. His head. His eyes. I would never live through this pain. Another wave took me. I couldn’t move or think. All I could do was lie frozen to my bed, the grief holding me in its clasp, cradling me like a monstrous mother.

*
* *

I stayed in my bed all day,
ignoring my mother’s pleas to come talk to her, watching the sunlight track on my wall from one end of the room to the other. My body was frozen still, but my mind spun.
If Davis was dead, then who was I with all these weeks? A hallucination of my own making? No. He had been here. He had.
My mind stubbornly refused to reconcile the two truths: Davis was dead. And Davis was here.

Finally,
when I couldn’t bear the small room any longer, I pulled on yesterday’s wrinkled clothes and snuck past my mother out of the flat.

The dank London air was the same as always. Pigeons fought over an ice-cream wrapper. A street sweeper whirred by, leaving clean, wet gutters behind him. All of these things were normal, just like they’d been every day. But here I was, with everything different. I hardly trusted my own mind. I needed something, some kind of proof that reality was one way or the other.

Blindly, I made my way through the streets until I found myself on the promenade by the Thames, where Davis and I had spent so many mornings. The familiar striped awning of the coffee cart flapped in the wind whipping off the river.

Harold was standing beside the cart, his back to me, as he stacked newspapers in a neat pile. He turned around and smiled as I approached.

“Good afternoon, lass.” He wiped his hands on his apron. I saw his eyes take in my uncombed hair and rumpled clothes. “I’ve missed you these last few mornings. The usual for you, then?”

“Yes, thank you.” So he knew me. I’d been here.

He ducked into the cart and started filling a tall coffee cup. Then he added milk and began filling a second cup.

“Harold, I have a question for you.” I tried to sound calm, but the tension was already gripping me, making my voice shaky.

“What is it, then?” He handed me the coffees and an almond croissant in paper.

“Do you remember that boy I come with every morning? The blond guy?” I stared at the stack of the
Times
instead of meeting his face.

But when he didn’t answer immediately, I raised my eyes.

He was staring at me in confusion. “And what boy would that be?”

“The blond guy. My boyfriend—the one I’m always with?”

Harold shook his head. “I’ve never seen you with any blond boy. Just by yourself. Every morning—two white coffees and an almond croissant—that’s your order. But you’ve always come alone, my dear.”

I turned and walked away rapidly without answering. I had been alone all this time? At the bench facing the river where we’d always stopped—I’d always stopped?—my fingers closed around the infinity charm I had once again put around my neck. It was my talisman from Davis. But something felt different. It was rougher, with sharp edges. I unfastened it, held it up, then dropped it in on the pavement with a gasp, my blood turning to ice-water.

For a long moment, I sat staring at the small object lying on the cobbles. It wasn’t the smooth silver charm I had treasured all these weeks. I had pulled from my neck a twisted chunk of metal, blackened and dirty, but still with flecks of blue paint. A piece of Davis’s car.

My mind flew back to that night when I had made Becca drive me to the site of the accident to look for the charm before I made her take me to Davis’s house. Had I picked up this bit of metal and imagined—hallucinated?—that it was the infinity charm? That would mean the charm, the real charm, was lying in the dirt somewhere on the hillside, maybe covered over with leaves, or had been crushed into nothingness from the force of the crash.

My breath was coming in tight little gasps now, and my hands were icy-cold and sweaty. I dropped my head into my arms so I wouldn’t have to look at that sad piece of metal lying at my feet. I tried to corral my racing thoughts. Had I actually been imagining Davis so vividly that I thought he was real? I’d blocked out the memory of his death and taken him, in my mind, to London? It was fantastic, too incredible to believe, and yet, the proof was staring me in the face.

But still. Still, there was one more thing. One more sign he’d been here—really himself. I turned and ran back up the steep streets, busy with afternoon commuters, panting as my feet slapped the sidewalk rhythmically. Back through the courtyard, back into the apartment lobby. I darted into the elevator and pressed
P.

As the doors slid open, I stepped out into the familiar, dusty wasteland at the top of the building. Everything was as I’d seen it last—the sheets of plastic, stacks of lumber, and buckets. I tiptoed to the corner where Davis and I had spent so many afternoons.

The corner was empty, but my eyes went straight to the heart I’d drawn around our footprints a few days earlier. It was still there, gleaming on the dusty floor, but now—my heart clutched, and I bent over to look more carefully—now there was only one set of footprints. My own. Nothing else. Beside them, the dust lay thick and undisturbed.

I staggered backward as if I’d received a blow, almost reeling against the wall. My hands found purchase on the dirty windowsill, and I clung to it as if it were a life raft. It was true, then. I was crazy. Davis was dead. He’d never been here in London. I’d done it all myself—the Secret Cinema, the London Eye. The beach at Brighton. I felt suddenly, horribly alone, and I pressed my forehead to the window and sobbed silently.

Making my shaky way to the elevator, I stopped and looked back. I wouldn’t be coming here again. In my mind, I silently said good-bye to the beautiful memories of Davis and me rolled together in the gray blanket, laughing, our heads pillowed on his backpack.

I let myself into the flat, which was blessedly empty. My parents were both still out. In my room, I pulled off my clothes numbly and turned the shower on as hot as it would go. I climbed in and let the water pound my neck and stream over my head. I felt calmer now. The frantic desperation of before was gone.

Here are the facts
, I told myself.
Davis died. You imagined him here in London. Then you realized the truth.

I raised my head at the thought and rubbed the water from my eyes.
I’d realized the truth . . . I had forced the dream about the password and the accident. I had dredged it up from the depths of my own memory. And I had shown myself, over and over, that Davis wasn’t here. I’d done it all on my own. Was that something a crazy person would do?

Slowly, I shut off the water and wrapped a towel around my head, still thinking hard. Grasping the reality of my situation, even if belatedly, just didn’t seem like something a crazy person would be able to do.
If I were really crazy, I’d just keep going on thinking that Davis was real and that we were together. My dreams had saved me, in a way. If it weren’t for the last nightmare, I might never have realized he was dead. But the dreams had come from inside my own head. I had saved myself. I had done it, and with no help from anyone else.