Chasing Spring(44)

She tried to push away from the wall, but Donny reached down and yanked her up by the throat. His meaty fingers closed in around her windpipe and her vision blurred. Black shadows loomed in the corners of her eyes as she fought him off, scraping at his fingers and kicking at him as hard as she could.

“LET HER GO,” Hannah screamed, holding out her cell phone to show that she’d placed a call to 911. The call rang twice before a dispatcher picked up on the other end.

“911, what city?” the dispatcher spoke from the receiver.

“LET HER GO AND LEAVE,” Hannah yelled.

Donny’s grip loosened around Elaine’s throat as he turned his sights on Hannah.

She braced herself and held the phone out toward him with a shaky hand.

“Leave right now and I’ll hang up the phone,” she declared with a confident voice.

“Hello? 911, what’s your emergency?” the dispatcher repeated.

Hannah held the phone to her ear, frantically trying to get out their address. “Send the police to 145—”

Donny backhanded the phone out of her grasp. It flew against the bathroom mirror, splintering the cheap glass into a million pieces. Shards rained down over them as Donny shoved Hannah to the ground. He pinned her stomach down with his knee as he reached for her neck.

Elaine coughed and forced breath back into her lungs, trying to regain the strength to save her friend. Hannah’s phone was lying a few feet away from her. She reached out for it, slicing her hand on the shards of glass as she pressed buttons, trying to reconnect the call. The screen was black and cracked down the center, too broken to be fixed.

Hannah struggled and screamed, trying to land a solid punch to Donny’s face as he strangled her. She thrashed like a fish out of water, clawing at his eyes and digging her nails into his face.

Elaine grabbed a half-empty perfume bottle on the bathroom counter and chunked it at the back of Donny’s head. She jumped onto his back, hammering her fists into his head, trying desperately to pull his attention back to her. She scratched at his eyes and screamed at him through her sobs.

“GET OFF HER!”

She could handle his blows, she could take his punishment, but she couldn’t watch Hannah’s face turn purple beneath Donny’s grip.

“Please, Donny, please,” she begged, pounding against him. “STOP!”

She felt a pair of hands yank her off him and felt Carl overpower her. She recognized his arm around her throat and his mouth against her ear. His dark words warned her to stay put, to cooperate and make it easy.

She knew she was helpless to save her best friend and yet she couldn’t give up.

She stared at Hannah’s hazel eyes as they bulged, reddened, and began to dim.

She yanked at the hold Carl had on her, crying and screaming for them to stop. They had to stop. They had to listen.

“PLEASE!” she yelled, digging her nails into Carl’s arm and carrying away strips of skin.

He hissed in her ear and reared back to punch her in the side, right above her kidney. Sharp, blaring pain radiated through Elaine’s body, but she was numb to the sensation. She could have been sliced in two, right down the middle, and it would have hurt less than watching her best friend die before her eyes.

Donny’s grip stole the breath from Hannah’s lungs without thought or remorse, like a gust of wind taking a flame from a match. Elaine watched from two feet away as Hannah’s body slowly, slowly deflated.

Everything was loud, so deafeningly loud as Elaine’s screams ricocheted around the bathroom, and then there was no sound at all.

There was nothing.

Hannah was dead and she’d taken Elaine’s senses with her.

Carl and Donny scrambled from the bathroom and Elaine crawled toward Hannah’s lifeless body.

She felt nothing as her fingertips skimmed across her best friend’s pale cheek. She saw nothing as she gripped Hannah’s body and pulled her up, trying to shake her back to life. She tasted nothing as her salty tears coated her lips. She heard nothing as she whispered for her friend to come back to her. She could smell nothing, not the sweat coating her body or the spilled perfume coating the bathroom floor.

She needed to follow Hannah. She belonged with her in life and in death. They were entwined deeper than lovers and more intimately than family. Without Hannah to guide her, Elaine was a lost soul. She hovered in the twilight of life, begging for death so she could join her friend. Heaven or hell, it didn’t matter.

She’d cling to Hannah anywhere, always.





Chapter Forty-Five


Lilah





I wanted his words to be a lie. I wanted my life to stay neatly packaged. I wanted to wake up every morning and pretend that my mother, even with her problems, still had her redeeming qualities. Now, I had nothing left to cling to. Chase had ripped that away from me like he was ripping stitches from a fresh wound. Without the delusions to keep together, I was forced to remember the last time I’d ever seen my mom alive.

She had gone missing after Hannah’s death, but somehow I had known she’d be at Hannah’s funeral. Everyone had gathered at the Matthews' house so that close family and friends could share in their memories of Hannah’s life.

My mother arrived like a tornado. She was impossible to miss as she stormed in crying and screaming at all of us. The image of her oily skin and yellowed teeth haunted me. She looked nothing like the woman who’d tried to raise me for seven years before calling it quits. She looked wild, like a feral animal.