Page 5 of Chaos

My glass shatters as I drop it, the shards crunching beneath my feet as I break into a sprint towards the front of the house in the wake of the others. I dropped my keys on the counter when I first got here, but Ethan snagged them on his way up. Before I can snatch them back, he slips behind the wheel and starts up the engine.

I take the passenger seat, eyeing his shaky hands warily as I hurriedly click my seatbelt into place. “Should you be driving?”

Ethan slides me a dismissive look, but his pinpoint pupils are hardly reassuring. He twists and props an elbow against the back of his seat, glancing back to check the driveway is clear as he reverses down it.

Except he doesn’t reverse.

I’m not sure how we gain enough speed to crash through a wall, but we do. It’s like a damn bomb goes off, debris flying everywhere, the wind knocked out of me a little as I slam forward and my seatbelt locks into place. I cough as dust or plaster or whatever the hell is floating through the air finds its way up my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes.

Rubbing at them with one hand, I grasp the door handle with the other, but it won’t open. I try to put some weight on it, to shove a little harder, but I can’t really move, for some reason. My… my legs are pinned, I realize, something crushing the hood and, in turn, crushing me too.

I choke out that I’m stuck, trying to turn towards my friends, trying to ask if they’re okay, only to find they’re already gone. Ethan and Vic are nowhere to be seen, but Ricky is standing at the driver’s side door, peering inside, eyes wide and panicked. “Fuck, Lottie.”

I try to move again, my ankle throbbing in protest as it refuses to budge from wherever it’s trapped. “Help me out.”

He doesn't move.

“Help me.”

Ricky swears again. He sets a hand on the roof of my ruined car, starting to lean inside, but another voice halts him—his brother’s voice halts him. “We gotta go.”

“I know that,” I snap. “Get me the fuck out of here.”

Ignoring me, Ethan gives his brother another shake. “C’mon.”

Panic envelops me like the world’s shittiest blanket as I hear what he doesn't say—leave her.

Ricky isn’t going to leave me. There’s no way. He’s not going to leave me trapped in a crushed car with the cops arriving at any minute, there’s nofuckingway.

Except he backs up a step. Lips parted, I think something like an apology escapes from between them. I don’t hear it—I onlyhear my own voice ringing in my ears as I scream at the top of my lungs at his receding figure.

“Fuck.”

2

He shouldn’t hate someone he’s never met before.

But when he walks in on his boss, his friend, crying, he finds he can’t help himself.

Contrary to howI imagine most people feel when waking up in a hospital, I donotfeel overjoyed to be alive.

Maybe because most people aren’t handcuffed to the damn bed rail. Or because I’ve clearly been under-prescribed pain meds and my ankle hurts like a bitch beneath the boot I discover it’s trapped in. My lack of gratitude could also come down to the rage that engulfs me as I slowly remember how I ended up here.

Most of all, though, I think it’s the woman dozing in the armchair in the corner of the room that makes me wonder whether a cold hole in the ground would be a welcome alternative.

Briefly, I consider a hasty self-discharge. Ripping out the IV sticking out of my hand, somehow slipping my cuffs, and making a run for it. Sneaking out is kind of a special skill of mine. Adormant skill, granted, but I still think I could make it out the door.

Ifit was anyone else curled up in that chair. If it was anyone but my older sister. Because Lux, she’s always had this freaky, incredibly annoying sixth sense when it comes to me and sneaking out. I swear, any of the times I ever did manage it, it was only because Lux let me.

This is not one of those times.

It’s like as soon as the thought even enters my mind, she senses it. Her eyes fly open. They land on me, as unreadable as the even expression flattening features I’ve always thought look nothing like mine—I’ve always beentoldlook nothing like mine. Something that gutted a younger version of me who wanted nothing more than to be just like her big sister. Who’d steal her clothes and style her hair in the same way, who always thought we were pretty damn alike—in personality, at least, if not anything else.

Until, of course, I learned that a hard head and snippy wit and a generally scathing disposition are only desirable qualities in whatever way Lux presents them. Not so much when it comes to however I do.

Lux doesn’t look all that scathing right now. She looks pretty damn serene as she stretches her arms above her head and yawns. Sounds it too as she ever-so-nonchalantly says, “You look like shit.”

I grunt. “Rude.”

---