Swell (24 page)

I remember the seatbelt cutting into my stomach and chest, and the snap of my neck flopping forward and back, and then around several times until the Partymobile landed on its roof. The seatbelt held my ragged body, suspended not only upside down but in disbelief. For a moment I saw Christian, but he wasn’t suspended like me. I’d heard things about what happens to the body when it isn’t buckled-in during a car accident. Now I could see it with my own eyes.

People who lived near the canyon came first to check on us. At least this is what I was told, because after I saw Christian’s shredded body in the broken window I passed out.

They said that the emergency people got me out and strapped me to a board. A team of doctors and nurses struggled to put me back together again. I drifted in and out of consciousness, picking up bits and pieces of what they said.

“Concussion.”

“Broken clavicle.”

“Smart girl was wearing her seatbelt.”

“Drinking heavily.”

I awoke in a hospital bed, my shoulder splinted with a wrap that went around my back and into a sling. My head pounded with a headache far worse than anything drinking ever brought on. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Rebecca. Rebecca?” I looked to my side and saw my mom sitting next to me. She leaned over my bed. My dad was standing beside her. He wiped tears from his eyes when he saw that I recognized him.

“She’s awake! Get the nurse.” My mom sent my dad down the hall. There was another person standing behind my mom. Her pretty hair gave it away.

“Beck, it’s Jenna. I’m here.” Jenna reached over and lightly touched my arm. Her angelic smile was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I realized how much I missed her.

The nurse came and checked the machines I was hooked to and said she was getting the doctor. My dad explained.

“You’ve been in and out of consciousness for three days, Rebecca.”

“I. Was?” I tried to pull myself up but the stabbing little knives in my shoulder and the fact that the room swayed like we were on a boat kept me in place.

“You were in a car accident, on that curve up the road from home.”

I remembered seeing the curve right before we went into it, knowing that the Partymobile wouldn’t make it at that speed.

“Going fast. Really. He’d been drinking.” The bottle, the water tower, the rage that poured from his heart for something that I hoped he wouldn’t figure out.

“Yes. But you’re going to be okay. You broke your collarbone and have a concussion. The seatbelt saved you.”

The doctor came in and performed similar vitals as the nurse did, checked my eyes, and asked me my name, the date, and who the president was. Even that exhausted me, and instead of conking out again, I threw up all over myself.

My parents and Jenna stayed with me. It looked like afternoon, but it could have been morning. The sun never seemed to move from behind the crack in the curtains that darkened my room.

Nobody mentioned Christian until I brought him up.

Chapter 26

The most painful thing about a car accident isn’t the physical damage. It’s the emotional destruction. Skin heals. Bone mends. But the mind is fucked forever.

A week lapsed from the time I entered the hospital until I got out. The pain pump I was hooked to made it so I didn’t care what day or time it was. I only wanted to feel better and the pump delivered that promise only a few times each hour.

Even if, deep down, I hid the memory of something terrible, it would still be there. Taunting me. Playing with my head. Creaming the inside of my soul as it struggled to reach out of my mind and grab me by the face, pulling me in to take a look at it. To make itself real. It felt like a suffocating mask on my face as I sat in a wheelchair in the hospital lobby, waiting for my dad to come around with the car.

Like a curtain that separates the room, I could still see my old life behind the veil. Now I was on the other side of that curtain, and no matter how much I pulled at it, I couldn’t make it open wide enough for me to step back through. I was eager, almost frantic, to pick up the pieces from behind that curtain — any little thing that I could grasp and hold onto for the sake of what had been mine.

Going home was more than what it was. I was going into a new life. Where I had struggled with self-confidence and hid it behind drinking, I now had nothing to hide behind except bandages. The only confidence I needed was knowing that I could make it to the toilet before I lost it in the middle of the floor. School was a distant memory, and I was allowed to do home study at my own pace. This was good, because my thoughts were on something else besides learning and homework.

I tried to bring Christian close to me in the days after I came home. Although my pace was slow, I initiated the greatest treasure hunt I’d ever embarked on. Every drawer, box, pocket, and even the trashcan, became a goldmine of remembrance. Into my temporary receptacle, a giant plastic bag, went the lipstick I wore on our first date, as well as the cork from the jug of wine he’d brought that night. A torn condom wrapper joined the mix, as did the pair of underpants I’d worn the night we’d first been together. Larger items, like the sheet that had served as my toga and the tube top I wore underneath it, were folded as neatly as I could manage and placed in a paper grocery bag. I worked in hour blocks of time on my collection, and when I should have been satisfied, I did another sweep.

I later took the toga sheet out of its paper case and laid it over my pillows so I could sleep on it. Inhaling the now pungent scent of sweat, dust, and the slight bite of wine was like heaven.

Jenna was going to take me to Christian’s service. There was no way I could drive myself with a mind full of Jello and a body that shook if I even tensed one muscle. My parents were reluctant to let me go.

My dad sat on the edge of my bed while I tried to put blush on my cheeks at the mirror. “It’s too much for you to handle.” 

I dropped the blush brush. “Look at what I’ve already handled, Dad!” My dad fetched it and placed it back in my hand. I would be damned if I looked as pale as I felt.

Where my dad made a small attempt to keep me safe at home, my mother went bonkers.

She paced my bedroom floor, her hands waving about. “You’ve already been through enough! You can’t go! It’ll hurt you more than you know.”

But it would hurt more if I didn’t say goodbye. If I wasn’t there for Christian one more time.

Jenna, who was now driving, arrived an hour before the funeral started. Her dark dress looked harsh against her light-colored hair. The usual paleness of her skin seemed extra white on this day.

“You’re still going, right?” She helped me tie my hair back.

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t.” I looked in the mirror at the dark figure sitting before it. The blush had done little to hide my pallor, and I considered wearing sunglasses to hide the dark crescents under my eyes.

My parents watched me walk behind Jenna out the door. Their silence was an answer to my defiant determination to attend Christian’s funeral. No lack of words on their part would stop me from meeting the dire need I held inside to be there.

We pulled up to the church and couldn’t find a place to park. Over 100 cars lined the street, clogged the parking lot, and snaked through the neighborhood behind the building. Jenna discovered a possible location between two Mercedes, and performed a flawless parallel parking maneuver into the tight spot.

She shut off the engine and observed the sea of vehicles, as well as the many suits and dresses that marched toward the church. “It looks like the whole school is here.”

I sucked in my breath and exhaled softly. Yes, they were all here. More than enough of the student body to create an uncomfortable feeling in my gut. I hadn’t thought much about who’d be here, except for Christian’s closest friends, sans Hillman, his family, and me.

Jenna reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of tissues, pressing them into my good hand. “Just in case.”

I tripped at the door and stumbled into the church. Vast expanses of wall carried the sound of many voices to the painted ceiling and across the space to the cross at the end. The whispers were undisguised.

“There’s Beck.”

“It’s her.”

“She looks terrible.”

“Poor thing.”

I didn’t want their sympathy, nor their attention. But I had both as I walked toward the pews on the arm of Jenna. Her face was stoic, her stance protective as she found a spot for us along the aisle in the middle of the church. I didn’t look at the faces now looking at me.

“Everyone is here,” she whispered in my ear. She did one more glance around the pews and inhaled sharply.

“Jesse’s here.” She motioned with her eyes to the wall along the right side of the church. I carefully moved my head toward that direction and spotted him. He was wearing black like the rest of us, and when I almost believed he was oblivious to my presence, he gave me his acknowledgement with an a-okay hand gesture.

I decided to look at the program that had been handed to me, and was taken aback that Christian’s face graced the cover. It seemed wrong.

It’s me. It really is, Beck.

But I can’t believe it, Christian.

I don’t expect you to right now. When the time is right, we’ll talk again.

What do you mean?

His voice went silent in my head, but his statement imprinted on my mind. We would talk again.

I’ll talk to you every single night, Christian. No matter what.  Until you answer me again.

A priest appeared and the service began. It was then that I allowed myself to look at the box where Christian lay. It was a glossy pine, or maybe mahogany, with a spray of white flowers across the top. I didn’t want to believe he was in there.

Two huge posters of Christian, one as a child and the other as the handsome boy I rem
embered him as, sat on easels at
either side of the casket. I watched his face the whole time, ignoring the priest, the incense, the prayers.

“Beck. Beck?” Jenna gave my arm a little squeeze, drawing me back out of my limbo state. I’d shut-off everything that was going on around me, focusing only on Christian’s image in my mind.

Suddenly, I thought about the purple reminder stone. I wished I had it with me, to roll through my fingers like a row of prayer beads.

People started filing out of the church, looking down at me as I sat still, staring straight ahead. I wanted to touch his casket.

“Where are you going?” Jenna watched me rise to my feet and approach the front of the church. I went as fast as my rubber legs could take me, and ran my hand across the coolness of the wood. I took the spray of flowers and let them tickle the skin between my fingers before plucking one of the flowers and holding it against my chest. If I’d had the reminder stone, I would have given it to him.

“I love you.”

As I turned to head back to Jenna, I noticed the other people had stopped to watch me. Devin had her hand over her mouth, Allison standing nearby with a chagrined look on her tanned face. Greg stood there with his hands in his pockets and a poker face. I wanted to tell them to go away forever.

Jenna was instantly at my side, linking her arm back with mine. She moved us to the side and toward an alternate exit. My eyes searched for Jesse, but he was gone. Before we went through the door I took one last look at Christian, and allowed my tears to flow unobstructed.

That night,
I punched my pillow and shook my head. Everything that I ever thought wouldn’t happen, did. My mind wouldn’t let go.

The sun had been shining on Christian’s face
when I saw him in the broken window. It looked like he’d been preserved in time, an inanimate object rather than the boy I loved. He left only a shell behind that had once encased something that changed me in profound ways.

I learned to love. I learned to drink. I learned to lie. And when he died, a part of me died with him. It took endless days after the funeral to bring my mind to some kind of normal, if only for an hour at a time. My heart was so heavy with sadness that I just shut it off. There was no more I could put into it.

Jesse eventually called to check on me. I was laying on the couch, trying to resist the urge to take another pain pill, even though my shoulder was killing me. I didn’t want anything in me anymore, even though my body craved it. I knew my parents were drinking a lot of wine in the days after the car accident. I could smell the oak casks the wine had aged in, the subtle burn of the alcohol in my nose. I hadn’t had anything to drink in weeks, and I didn’t want to get addicted to something else. 

“Hi, Rebecca. It’s Jesse.” My mouth instantly curved upward, a motion I hadn’t made in a long time.

“It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“I would have called sooner, but I didn’t wanna bother you.”

“I wouldn’t have been bothered.”

His breathing was heavy, as if he’d been panting.

“Are you running or something? It sounds like you need to catch your breath.”