Until Beth Page 2

Luke’s eyes were glazed and bloodshot. “Well, you shouldn’t be alone. These days, you never know what kinds of creeps are lurking around.”

  Arms aching, my adrenaline wave finally ebbed. I was spent, too exhausted to feel much of anything. “Thanks for the flowers and your concern. The door has a lock, so I’m safe in here.”

  Luke let the door close gently behind him. “Good. I wouldn’t want anyone to barge in here and steal you away. Don’t you want to put these pretty flowers in water?”

  I caught a whiff of something under the heavy perfume of the flowers. And it wasn’t bacon. It was cheap beer.

  Luke was plastered.

  “You looked so awesome out there, Beth. Like a rocking blue-haired angel.” Luke smiled, his gaze dropping to my bustier. “Close up you look even better.”

  “Uh, thanks.” I backed into the room, a smile pasted on my face. “I’m kind of tired.”

  Luke tossed aside the flowers and lumbered toward me. “Carson says you need someone to take your mind off your dead boyfriend.”

  “Carson should stay the hell out of my business.” My cheeks burned. “And you should leave.”

  “What’s the matter with you? It’s not like Sam Bernstein’s gonna come back from the dead and beat the crap out of me.” Luke staggered closer.

  Dead. I didn’t want to hear that word. Not out of Luke’s mouth. Not in the same sentence with Sam.

  “Shut up, Luke! Get out of here. Now.”

  “What you need is someone who can protect you from the monsters in this town.” Luke grabbed me and crushed me against him, his itchy wool lacrosse jacket scraping my skin.

  His beer breath made my eyes tear. I shoved at him with both palms but couldn’t pry myself loose from his grip. “Let go of me. I can protect myself.”

  Luke pushed me onto the couch and lunged on top of me, one hand thrust under my skirt, the other clamped over my mouth to muffle my shouts.

  “Why don’t you give me a try?” he breathed in my ear.

  Suffocated by his sweaty palm, I clawed and scratched but couldn’t budge his hard-muscled bulk off of me. His free hand went for the buttons of my bustier, which he yanked and ripped loose, exposing my strapless bra. I bit at his hand, my teeth digging into the flesh of his palm.

  “Hey! What’s wrong with you? I was just—”

  “Asshole!” I squirmed and managed to knee him in the groin.

  Luke rolled onto the floor, holding his crotch. Scrambling to my feet, I rushed for the door and managed to get it open, but Luke lunged, grabbed me, and slammed me onto the floor. Pinning me, he dug his fingers into my breasts.

  I thought I might have been sobbing. Or I might have been screaming.

  The door crashed open. “Omigod! Get off her!” Shelly shrieked.

  I struggled; the world dimmed. My chest burned with trapped current. Luke lifted his mouth from my neck and snarled, “Fuck off, bitch.”

  “I said, get off her!” Shelly screamed. A folding metal chair made contact with the back of Luke’s skull. Luke yelled and rolled away from me, rubbing his head. Shelly stood frozen, holding the chair as a shield.

  I crawled away and grabbed a can of extra-hold hairspray from the dressing table. Pointing the nozzle at Luke’s face, I could barely spit the words past the sizzling heat in my throat. “I’ll blind you if you take one step closer.”

  Luke wobbled to his feet. “Isn’t it time you tried a real guy?”

  Depressing the nozzle, I unleashed a toxic cloud. Luke howled, knuckles pressed to his eyes.

  In the same moment, Shelly swung the chair again, cracking it across Luke’s face. He reeled and sank whimpering to his knees, blood gushing from his nose.

  The room darkened to grainy tones of black and gray. The blood on Luke’s face glistened like an oil spill.

  Shelly tossed me her jacket. A moment later, Carson stormed into the dressing room and yanked the dazed and bleeding Luke to an upright position. My brother’s glassy-eyed gaze shifted from me to Shelly. “What the hell? You two did this to him?”

  “He did this to me!” Shaking with fury, I glared at Carson, my finger trembling over my phone screen. “Get him out of here before I call the police! Better yet, you call the police and tell them your drunk best friend tried to rape your sister!”

  “Beth.” Carson shot a look at Shelly, who paced a few feet away like she wanted to hit him over the head with a chair, too. “Don’t make a scene. He’s just a little drunk, that’s all. He didn’t mean—”

  I snorted and flopped onto the couch, disgusted. “Fuck you, Carson. Just. Fuck. You. Take him and go!”

  Carson kept an eye on Shelly as he dragged the limp Luke into the hallway. I shoved my phone into my bag. A night-dark haze drifted languidly above Carson’s head. My lungs burned as if I’d inhaled a roomful of acrid smoke. I wanted to tell him not to go. He was drunk too. But I was way too angry.

  Only when they were both out of sight did Shelly set down the chair.

  “Shit. What did I do?”

  “Saved my ass, basically,” I said, trying to breathe past the lingering burn in my throat.

  Shelly helped me out of my torn costume and back into my own clothes, then plopped beside me on the couch and wrapped me in her arms.

  “It’s okay. It’s over.”

  Andre came skidding into the room, fury in his eyes. “What the hell? I just saw Carson and Luke. Don’t tell me that asshole—he didn’t, did he?”

  I shook my head. “I just want to go home, guys.” Mom was out of town. And there was no way I wanted to ride home with Carson.

  “We’ll drive you,” Shelly said. “Why don’t we just hang a little until the crowd thins out?”

  Sitting between my two best friends in the world, wrung out and shaken, all I could do was nod in agreement. I don’t remember how long I sat on the couch with my head nestled against Shelly’s shoulder or how they managed to get me to the car.

  I slumped against the back seat of Andre’s beat-up old van as we exited the school driveway. From the corner of my eye I spied a lone figure standing at the edge of the woods across the road. When I turned my head for a better look, it was gone.

  We turned off the winding road to the school and pulled onto Route 292. By the time we reached the notorious patch of Skilling Highway where the road snaked in hairpin turns, my eyes were slipping closed. I’d seen so many accidents on that stretch, I barely flinched at the red and blue alternating flashes that pulsed through the light snowfall. Smoke curled from the chassis of a car that had skidded into a ditch and flipped over. White-coated people swarmed the wreck like maggots, carefully extracting a bloody tangle of arms and legs. Tingling heat spread from my chest into my throat as I recognized the upside-down Duke Lacrosse sticker on the bumper.

  “Stop the car, Andre!”

  Andre jammed on the brakes. We spilled out of the van, me scrambling across the slippery ground. A white sheet, already accumulating a crust of snow, had been draped over a motionless body on a gurney. One red-sleeved arm dangled from under the sheet. Luke wore that damn lacrosse jacket everywhere.

  The snowy air dimmed and twirled into an inky pinwheel of jet-black smoke that hovered, then sank onto the sheet-covered body.

  I wasn’t sure how I knew. But I was more than certain.

  Luke was dead.

  The EMTs hoisted a body, the head braced and secured on a backboard, onto a second gurney. I cried out. The face was beyond recognition, but I knew that bloodstained Duke jersey was Carson’s.

  The darkness emerged from Luke’s still body and lingered near Carson, negative space against the falling snow and flashing lights.

  The ground fell away. My chest inflated with so much crackling pain that I felt it behind my eyes as I wished the swirling disturbance away with all my strength.

  The patch of darkness, as if it had responded to my will, brushed against Carson’s blood-spattered chest. Hesitating for only a moment, it rose and dissipated into the night sky.


  3

  CARSON MADE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT.

  It was mid-afternoon of the next day when Mom, who’d flown back home on the red-eye, finally allowed me in to see him. Entwined in tubes and wires, he was outfitted with a neck brace, his face bruised and swollen, his head swathed in white. If the nurse hadn’t walked me to his bedside, I would not have recognized my own brother.

  He wheezed, each breath an effort.

  “Carson?” I whispered, leaning in close to his ear. His eyelids flickered and opened, his gaze fixing on me for a second before drifting out of focus. The room darkened slightly, a vague electric tingle working its way up the back of my neck.

  Mom sat upright in one of the chairs, knitting needles flying. Before she’d opened her gallery selling antique paintings, jewelry, and artifacts, she’d had a business knitting baby clothes for her rich customers. She could knit and crochet at the speed of a drum solo, her needles clacking out rhythmic paradiddles. The more upset she was, the faster she knitted. The year before Dad died, when the signs of his cheating were impossible to ignore, she’d knitted hats for every new baby in Linford.

  I couldn’t fathom what she was creating, but her needles were about to break the sound barrier.

  Mom set aside her needles and whispered. “There was a blood clot in one of his lungs, Beth. They think they’ve resolved that, but—” she swallowed hard, “—his spine has a C8 fracture… It’s at the base of his neck. It means he’ll be… Carson will be in a wheelchair for certain. If he—” Mom broke off in a sob.

  I looked away, my gaze dropping to Carson’s hands resting still at his side, the palms flexed unnaturally backward, the fingers curled in. He moaned, his lids fluttering. The room darkened another notch. “Mom, why don’t you take a break and get some food? I’ll stay with him.”

  Mom hesitated, her brows forming a crease. “You sure, honey?”

  “You need to eat,” I insisted. “You can’t afford to get sick.”

  “Okay.” She rose to her feet with a sigh.

  I waited until she was in the hall to lean over my brother again and say, “Can you hear me, Carson?”

  His eyelids fluttered but remained closed.

  “Are you in pain?”

  A soft gasp. The darkness thickened around Carson. My chest flared with heat, but the room was chill and damp. I didn’t understand what was going on, but it sure was a lousy time for an anxiety attack.

  Carson and I had always fought. No squabble was too trivial. After Dad died it had only gotten worse, with him trying to prove he could do the “man of the house” thing better than Dad had. Which wasn’t such a lofty goal to begin with, given the less than stellar example Dad had set.

  Now, I wanted to take back every bad thing I’d ever said or thought about him.

  What kind of sister would let her brother drive in the state Carson had been in? Even if he had wanted to set me up with a guy who’d tried to rape me.

  Carson’s eyes snapped open and locked on mine. He mumbled something through the giant tube stuffed in his mouth, but I couldn’t understand. His eyelids slid closed again.

  I squeezed his hand tighter and watched the rise and fall of his chest, each breath like liquid slurped through a straw.

  Carson shuddered. The green line on the wall monitor next to his bed went from sharp zigzags to lapping waves. The red light above the bed flashed. A shrill alarm blared. In seconds feet pounded the tile floors, headed our way.

  Time slowed to a crawl. The room dimmed further, darkness pooling over Carson like ink stirred in water. My vision constricted to a tunnel of brightness and my chest screamed with pain as though my heart was literally on fire.

  I closed my eyes and focused on a single thought.

  Please don’t let my brother die.

  A pack of grim-faced medical staff hurtled into the room, backing me into a corner. Engulfing his bed, they clapped my brother’s chest with metal paddles. The monitor’s wiggly green line flattened out, accompanied by a terrifyingly long beep.

  My labored breaths were like gulps of scalding steam. Blood roared in my ears. I was too afraid to open my eyes as I whispered, You can’t die, you can’t die, you can’t die.

  The electric heat in my chest had flared out. My fingers ached from squeezing them together. I opened one eye to look, not sure what I would find—a corpse, or a living brother?

  Carson coughed and the monitor hiccuped back to life.

  The thin green line on the monitor resumed its steady pace.

  Carson was alive.

  For now.

  4

  LUKE WAS BURIED THE MONDAY AFTER THE accident. Mom sent flowers. At least no one expected us to attend the funeral with Carson barely clinging to life. I was relieved not to have to face Luke’s family.

  I kept a bedside vigil with Mom, praying and begging the powers that be to let my brother live.

  Over the next few days, Carson began to breathe easier. My dark anxiety had dissipated and with Carson out of the woods for now, Mom insisted that I return to my normal routine. Spent from my weirdly focused efforts, I finally agreed.

  Carson’s accident had had one positive side effect.

  It had taken my mind off Sam.

  I woke the following Monday morning to a silent house. Gray dawn seeped through my partly open blinds. While I’d prayed for Carson to live, I’d barely had time to think about much else.

  I flopped onto the bed and reached for my guitar, but there was no solace to be found. My fingers were blunt slabs of meat, the music that used to burn inside me trapped under a layer of permafrost. The only thing I could feel anymore was the current of heat that had nearly consumed me in Carson’s hospital room.

  Mom had already left for the hospital. With Carson stabilized for now, I’d promised her I’d return to school. But I wasn’t ready to face anyone yet, not even Shelly or Andre, who’d both offered to drive me around for the foreseeable future. I’d texted them to say I’d be staying home today. My phone rang a moment after my message was sent.

  “C’mon, Beth, sitting home and wallowing isn’t healthy,” Shelly said.

  “I just can’t face everyone yet, Shel. It’s like overnight I’ve become the poster child for tragedy.”

  “You’ve been working on that for a while now.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Look, Beth—I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Life has kicked you in the butt, but you’re not the one who’s missing—Sam is. And he would want you to have fun, not turn into a zombie. You’ve just been going through the mo—”

  I cut her off. “My brother is hovering between life and death, Shelly, and you think I care about fun?”

  Silence crackled on the other end of the line. After a hesitation Shelly said, “Beth, you know Sam and I were friends since, like, forever, way before you two hooked up. I miss him, too. And I’m so sorry about everything else. But you have to keep living. You can’t just curl up in a ball and die.”

  “I know you mean well,” I said finally. “But your timing’s a little off. Have a good day at school. I promise I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  I stared at my guitar and tried to imagine strumming Blast Mahoney’s “Like Never.” It was our unofficial theme song. In a year would I still be sitting here staring at my guitar, missing Sam and praying for Carson to live?

  Though I couldn’t bring myself to play it, thinking about the music calmed me, the memory of those ringing chords transporting me back in time—Sam smiling at me, brushing the hair from my eyes. When he looked at me in that certain way of his, my doubts fled.

  Then I heard it. Soft tinkling notes like rain on a roof. Or was it the distant notes of “Like Never?”

  I ran to the window. Outside, it was as though a dark curtain had been thrown over the sun. I squinted and looked down. A figure made of shadow stood in our driveway. It turned away and cut to the other side of the street, disappearing into the woods opposite
our house. My heart pumping, something compelled me to see if I was imagining this or not.

  If I was, I might need something much stronger than anti-anxiety meds.

  I slipped into my sheepskin boots, bounded down the steps and out the front door. Crossing to where the weeds bordered the road, I peered down the snowy incline that ended in a rushing stream. No visible tracks.

  Shivering and spooked, my feet numb from the cold, I hurried home, bolted the door, and ran up the stairs to my room.

  It must have been hours later when I woke and peered out the window. Mom’s car was in the driveway.

  Mom always had classical music playing whenever she was home, so the utter silence in the house was eerie. I followed the faint clicking sound into the den where she sat with the shades drawn, knitting furiously, the TV on with the sound turned down. “Hi, honey,” she said without looking up. “The school said you never showed today.”

  “Mom—I—”

  “It’s okay, Beth. Sit down, please.” She patted the seat beside her.

  The whispery librarian quality of her voice sent a chill through me. The more quietly Mom spoke, the more upset you knew she was. In the spectrum of things I’d done to piss her off, ditching school would probably only rate a four—and under the circumstances, probably not even a two. But her voice was at level ten soft.

  She set her knitting aside. “Carson’s doing much better today. They took the tube out this morning and he was able to talk to me a bit and even eat a little Jell-O.”

  I nodded, my heart thumping. The news sounded upbeat, but Mom’s voice maintained its level tone. I shivered. That’s how she always did it. Start with the positive. Except when we found out about Dad. There was no appropriate segue for that.

  “Beth, his spine was injured at the C8 level. An incomplete fracture. The doctors hope after the swelling goes down he’ll have more use of his—” Mom stopped, swallowed several times, then continued. “He can move his arms somewhat, but he’ll never walk. And he needs months and months of rehab before he can come home to stay.”

  I studied her mouth as she enunciated each word, the sounds looping and reverberating in my ears.