All This Time(24)

It keeps ringing.

Tentatively, I press the green button and hold it up to my ear.

“Hello?”

The phone crackles noisily, the sound of buzzing and distant voices pulling through the static.

“Can… ear me? Don’t… have to…”

“Who is this?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear, straining to hear. But the line abruptly goes dead. I pull the phone away to see the screen is dark. I hold down the power button as hard as I can, but it refuses to turn back on. The battery is completely drained.

I limp quickly back to my bed, rip the cord out of my phone, and plug it into Kimberly’s.

I pull my desk chair over and plop down, staring at the phone as it charges, the battery symbol appearing, red line blinking. I lean against my nightstand, watching. Who the hell would be on the other end of that call?

I wait and wait, but the phone refuses to boot back up. My eyes start to droop. I remember pestering Kim to get a new phone, one that might actually charge, but she never got the chance. So I sit and I wait.

I wake with a start, realizing I’m back in bed, the covers wrapped firmly around me.

I don’t even remember lying down.

Frustrated with myself, I roll over and reach out for Kimberly’s cell, feeling my way up and down the nightstand. I can’t find it anywhere.

Did I knock it off in my zombie state?

I lean over the edge to peer around on the floor, but the blood rushes to my head and sends a throbbing pain across the length of my scar. Note to self: brain is still not ready for a head rush.

There’s nothing on the floor.

I mean, a few lingering Pop-Tart wrappers, but no phone.

I clamber out of bed, looking at my desk for her purse. But… it isn’t there. The spot where it was resting just last night is vacant.

That doesn’t make any sense.

Slowly, I turn toward my closet. Now that I think of it, what actually makes no sense is that the purse was even on the desk in the first place. It was never on my desk. It’s still…

I open the closet door and zero in on the box immediately, tucked away in the corner, just like it’s always been.

I pull back the lid to see the shoe, the disco ball, and…

The purse, cell phone inside, screen dark and quiet.





12


“It didn’t happen. It’s just your head,” Sam calls to me on our run the next morning, struggling to keep up with my scared-shitless pace, which is coming pretty close to an Olympic marathon runner’s even with my less than fully functioning leg.

On our first mile on the track, I told him about the phone, the unknown caller, the garbled voice, struggling to put into words whatever the hell happened last night.

He’s always been the logical one. Maybe he can help me make sense of this.

“Sam, I saw it ringing. I heard someone on the other end. I could tell you every detail. It didn’t feel like a dream.”

My leg buckles and I stop abruptly. My hands grab my knees as I struggle to catch my breath, spots forming in front of my eyes.

“I didn’t say you were dreaming, dude,” Sam says as he stops next to me. “But you did have a brain injury.”

“Why is this still happening? I’m doing everything the doctor said. Taking the pills, doing the memory exercises, staying active. But every time I turn around, I see her,” I say, frustrated. I straighten up, meeting his gaze. “She didn’t even want to be with me, but now she won’t leave me alone?”

I don’t know who’s more shocked by these words. Where did that come from?

Sam just looks at me, his expression unreadable.

The guilt bubbles back up, but part of me can’t help but feel there’s truth in what I said. Kimberly said she didn’t want to be with me anymore, and yet the moment I breathe a little easier, there she is, haunting every headache and twinge of pain. Every memory of the accident. Every thought about the future.

I’m trying my best to stand on my own and do what she wanted me to do. Why won’t she just let me?

“What if this never heals?” I ask as I jab angrily at my scar. “Am I going to keep seeing things and hearing things until I go crazy? It hurts too much seeing her. Thinking she’s here.”

“It hurts you?” Sam snorts, looking back at me. “Did it ever occur to you that you’re not the only one grieving, Kyle?” I notice now the rigid set of his shoulders. “I would kill to see her again.”

“Sam, I—”

“Did you ever even bother to see how I was doing? To see if I’m okay?” he asks. “You only call me when you have a problem. You never want to talk unless it’s about you.”

Hearing that makes me feel like shit, but at the same time, it was different for him. I was the one there that night. The one driving the car my girlfriend died in.

We stare at each other for a long moment, years of friendship struggling against these last few fucked-up months.

“She was my friend too,” he says, his voice low. “She was special to me, too.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. I know she was,” I say. I take a deep breath and gaze past him at the track. “I’ve been a shitty friend. I—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He shrugs and lets out a long sigh. “Me neither, man. That’s why we can’t lose each other,” he says, patting my good shoulder. “The only thing making you crazy is you. You had a nightmare. Let it go.”