Page 58 of Dark Roads
“Thanks.” Her voice felt dry, husky. She slowly sat up and reached for the coffee, wincing as her body stretched. She couldn’t stop thinking about what it had felt like to fall from that cliff, the sensation of nothing under her feet, hands grasping at air. The strangest thing was the feeling of disappointment when she woke at the bottom. She’d thought that if she ever came close to death, she would feel her sister nearby, maybe hear her voice, but it was only the dog.
Jonny got to his feet and passed her the cup, made a few adjustments to her bed so that she could sit up. She took a swallow, rested her head back. Was it only this morning that Jonny had left her campsite? She imagined how she looked to him now. The nurses had helped her into the bathroom to wash the blood out of her hair. She’d studied herself in the mirror, shocked at her pale face, the dark shadows under her eyes, the ugly bruise along her temple. Turned out head wounds bleed a lot, but the cut wasn’t as deep as she had feared. She only needed a few stitches. The area around it was swollen and hurt to touch. The mother of all goose eggs.
She blinked at him. “How long have you been here?”
“Just a few minutes.”
“Your friend tell you?”
“Andy? Yeah.”
She remembered the ambulance ride, the jerkiness of the stretcher as the paramedics bumped it over the curb and pushed it into the hospital. “I owe him.”
“Don’t tell him that. He’ll have you buying him dinner.”
She looked over and met his eyes. Was that jealousy? She couldn’t tell. His voice was teasing, but they’d left things so awkward. “I could offer him a burnt hot dog.”
He laughed. “That’s still better than hospital food. I broke my ankle a few years ago and needed surgery. Hailey snuck in DQ milkshakes and hid under my bed every time a nurse came to check on me.”
“Nice. You had your own delivery service.”
“She was just trying to get out of school,” he said with another easy laugh. “She always wanted to be outside, and skipped classes constantly, but she got good grades.”
“How did you become friends?”
“We were kids, she taught me to ride. We liked doing all the same things.” He rubbed at a worn spot on his jeans. Beth imagined them riding dirt bikes, going out to the lake, jumping off the dock. She could hear the echo of her laughter. She was a ghost, always around him.
“Amber and I didn’t have much in common, but I think that’s why we got along. I didn’t have to worry about her stealing my clothes.” A comforting warmth spread across her chest, a memory of Amber flipping through her closet.Why is everything gray? You need more color!
“Family is different.”
“Mine is a mess.” She sighed. “I’ve been lying to my parents for months. They don’t know that I dropped out of school. They don’t even know that I’m in Cold Creek.”
“No kidding.” His eyebrows lifted.
“I can’t seem to make myself care anymore.” She drifted into silence. She liked that he didn’t ask for more details. He took a sip of his coffee, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He’d been like that in bed, she remembered. Never pushing her past her limit or rushing ahead. It was this easy sort of dance. She wished they were in a darkened tent again. Using their bodies to talk.
“I stopped racing for a while,” Jonny said. “It seemed stupid, shallow. Who cared about winning a trophy when my best friend was gone? It took a while to get over that.”
“How did you?” She watched his face, the play of emotions.
“It bothered me, that I was letting Hailey down. She used to come out to every race, no matter what, and I started thinking that maybe I should have as much faith in myself as she did.”
Beth thought over what he’d just said. “Amber was such a hippie. She’d probably tell me that I’m on a spiritual journey now and I need to go with the flow.” Beth waved her hands in the air, then brought them to the prayer position at her heart center. “Namaste.”
He smiled. “Maybe you could open a yoga studio.”
“Ha. Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.” She let out her breath, releasing some of the emotion that had tightened her throat. “Amber really liked Hailey.”
“Hailey liked her a lot too. She was upset they couldn’t see each other.”
“Why was Vaughn so hard on her?”
“That’s the bullshit part of it all. We pulled some crazy stunts, but Hailey wasgood. She kept me away from drugs, and she was always busting up my fights. She was my voice in the dark, you know? That person who gets you through when you can’t see the way.”
Beth thought over his words with a pang of longing. Amberhad been her voice. Maybe that was why she had felt so weightless since she’d died. Unanchored. Lost.
“We got stuck in a silver mine when we were kids,” he said. “I freaked about bats and Hailey told me to stop being such a baby.” He laughed. “She dragged me out of there, talking the entire time about how she was never going to let me forget that she was the brave one.”
