Friday, July 6, 2012

Chapter 7- Aftermath

     The image of her back receding into the bathroom stall flooded my mind, and my eyes filled with tears.  Before I knew it, I was sobbing into the boy’s chest.  The tears spilled over, and before I could stop myself they traveled down my cheeks and onto the boy’s tuxedo.
     I had to get out of there.  I quickly removed myself from the boy’s grasp.  I had to find Cera.  I had to find her and get out of here.  I couldn’t deal with this right now.  I started to back away from the boy and before I knew it I was darting through the crowd of high school students.  I heard the boy call after me, but my mind was set on my goal—find Cera. 
     I used my elbows to part through the crowd, and I noticed that the further into the crowd I got, the quicker my breath got.  Before I knew it I was hyperventilating and pushing myself back out of the crowd.  I needed to breathe. 
     I focused on getting air into my lungs and then back out to the world.  Breathe.  Yes, that was it.  I felt myself begin to calm down, and that’s when I saw her. 
     Cera was on the opposite side of the gym by the doors. 
     I darted off towards her, and when I reached her I pulled her into a hug.
     “Where have you been?” I was so overwhelmed with relief.  Now I could finally get out of this nightmare. 
     “Looking for you of course.”  She sounded as equally glad to see me. 
     “Let’s get out of here.”  I grabbed her wrist and exited out of the doors.  I led her to the Jeep, and there were only a few people outside.
     The police hadn’t arrived yet, so if we made it out now, we wouldn’t have to be questioned.  I yanked the door open and brought the engine to life. 
     I didn’t notice until now that tears were still streaming down my face.
    “Do you know who it was?” I looked over at Cera and saw that her own eyes were glossy and the tears would come any second.
    “It was Catherine.” I told her gravely and looked back at the road.  I heard her gasp, and that was when she really started to sob.  After a couple minutes of hysteria, she brought herself back down enough to talk again.
    “What happened?” She said.  “Why was she up there?  Was she pushed? Oh God, Lily what if somebody pushed her?  She was murdered! Oh, God…” she continued hysterically for a couple of minutes and then went back to crying. 
    We rode in silence for what seemed like forever.  Cera’s sobs had subsided a little, but there was still a steady stream of tears coming from her eyes.  Every once in a while I would look over at her.  Each time I did her eyes got redder and her face was paler.  When I looked at her now, she looked as white as a sheet and her eyes were almost the color of her ruby hair.  She was staring at her hands that were cupped in her lap.  I wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how.
    “Cera…” I started, but before I could say anything else, she started to talk.
    “I just don’t understand…why? Why Catherine?  Why did it have to be somebody we know?  She was our friend!  She was only… she was only seventeen.  Oh my God, Lily it could have been one of us!  We could have been pushed, and killed.  Oh God!  Lily…” She was working herself up again.  The longer she talked the harder she cried and by the end I could barely understand her.
    I reached over and grabbed her hand.  She stopped talking, but continued to cry.  “Cera.  Now listen to me.” She was silent and I could feel her gaze on me so I continued.  “We’re fine.  You hear me?  Catherine was an innocent bystander and what happened was horrible, but we can’t freak out just yet okay?  We don’t even know if she’s dead.  We don’t even know if she was pushed.  But we have to stay calm.”  I didn’t know why we had to stay calm, but that’s what they said in all of the movies and books whenever something tragic happened.  You always stayed calm.
    I was surprised at how sturdy my voice was.  Yes, I had disliked Catherine, but I didn’t want her dead!  I should be freaking out, but I wasn’t.  I knew why instantly.
    I wasn’t freaking out because I’ve had to deal with something like this before.  When my father attacked me, I had freaked out afterward and it hadn’t done any good.  Staying calm seemed better than freaking out.  I had learned that from my first brush with death.
    “Cera, are you at least a little better?” I looked over and saw that the sobbing had stopped but the tears continued.  I hoped my speaking up didn’t upset her more.  I just wanted her to stop crying.  It was tragic, but crying didn’t help anybody.  It certainly didn’t help Catherine.
    “How come you always know the right thing to say?”  She looked up at me and I could see gratitude in her eyes. 
    I held her gaze and said, “I don’t but…”
    Before I could get the rest of my sentence out Cera was shouting.  “Lily!  Lily look out!  Stop!”  She was pointing ahead of us and I stopped looking in her direction and back towards the road.  Ten feet in front of us was a person lying in the middle of the road.  They were covered in blood. 
    It was a girl.  She was wearing a purple prom dress, and the hair… it was the same hair I saw receding into the bathroom, it’s how I identified the falling girl at the dance.
    It was Catherine.
    I swerved to miss the body in the road, but went off road and I tried desperately to get back on it, but it was too late.  The car wasn’t going to go back on the road.  Others joined Cera’s screams, and I realized that they were mine.
     We screamed until everything went black, and I couldn’t hear anything anymore.

    Darkness was everywhere.  I couldn’t see, and I could barely hear.  My eyes didn’t seem to functioning properly, and I didn’t know why.  I could feel panic begin to bubble up in me, but it was no good.  Panic didn’t do me any good, so I tried my best to stayed calm. 
    I tuned into what I could hear.  There was a faint beeping.  It far off and I could barely hear it, but it sounded like something that belonged in a hospital.  I continued to listen to the beeping and realized that it was in sync with my own heartbeat. 
    That beeping was monitoring my heartbeat, but why?  What happened?  Was I in the hospital?  I willed myself to remember what happened.  Why could I be in the hospital?  Why wouldn’t my eyes just open and reaffirm what I suspected?  What was going on?
    Then the beeping quickened, and I realized that I was panicking.  But then there was alight touch.  It was soft, warm skin on mine.  It calmed me to know that somebody was there.  The touch grew stronger and it enveloped me some more.  It was calming, and it made me feel protected.
    I heard a voice.  It was a deep voice, and it was gentle.  It made me feel protected, but I didn’t know why.   I tried as hard as I could to focus all of my attention on what the voice was saying. 
    “…Wake up.  Please.  Please you have to wake up.” The voice was filled with emotion.  The person sounded on the edge of tears.  “I don’t know what I would do if you never knew how I really felt.”  The touch continued, but the voice stopped. 
    Eventually the touch gave way, and I was enveloped into the darkness once again.

    I don’t know when, but conciseness found its way to me, and I felt my eyes flutter open.  I was lying in a very uncomfortable position, and I was under itchy hospital covers.  Hospital, I was in the hospital. 
    I started to panic.  I took in my surroundings.  There were two beds in the room, I was in one and Cera was in the other.  We were the only two people in the room.  But why?  What happened? 
    My mind flashed back to the last night I could remember.  Scenes of a boy were jumbled in my head.  I remember crying into his jacket, and I remember the panic of having to find Cera.
    That’s when it all flooded back to me.
    We were in an accident.  I had swerved to miss Catherine. Oh, God.  Was she dead?  What happened to her?  Was Cera okay?  Millions of questions were filling my head and nobody was here to answer them.
    So instead of panicking, I decided to look at my body.  I started with my arms.  They were still skinny and pale, but were banged up with multiple cuts and new bruises were forming.  My legs were sore, and ached.  I noticed that my left foot was in a boot.  What had I broken?  What had Cera broken?  Was the Jeep totaled?  My brain just kept filling with questions. 
    I looked around me for a call button that would bring in a rushing nurse, but I couldn’t find one.  How could people just leave me?  Did they even know I was here?  Did mom and Tyler know?
    I looked around the room again and noticed a blue mask sitting on the side table to my left.  I picked it up and images of a mystery boy in this mask flooded my eyes.  He was here?  This took his stalking to a whole new level.  And where was that voice I heard earlier?  The voice that calmed me down and willed me to wake up. 
    Well I’m awake, and they aren’t here.  Typical.  I scanned the room again, searching for any clue that somebody other than Cera, the doctors, and me had been here. 
    That’s when I see it.  There was a lump on the couch in the far corner by Cera’s bed.  I didn’t see the person because they had a blanket covering their face.  I had to wake them up.  I had to know what was going on here. 
    I looked for something to throw.  I felt too weak to get up and wake them up on my own, and I didn’t want to scream and bring in a rushing crowd of doctors and nurses.  I found plastic cup that was half full with water.  I drank some of the water so I didn’t soak the person. 
    I threw it and water splashed down the length of the blanket.  The person woke up and made a scared cry.  It wasn’t loud, but I could still hear it from my place across the room.
    They got up, and I could see their face.  I didn’t believe my eyes.  No, this wasn’t possible.  Him of all people?  Did the universe hate me?  Why him?