Little Do We Know(71)
She jerked her arm away and kept walking.
“I think about that day all the time,” I yelled. “I think about it constantly. At night, when I can’t sleep, all I do is replay that conversation in my head. All those things my dad said. How I didn’t defend you. And I didn’t help you. But I still want to help you. You need me—”
Emory stopped cold and turned around. “He practically said it was my fault. And you agreed with him.”
“I didn’t mean…You took it the wrong way….” I panicked. It was happening again. I didn’t have time to think about what I wanted to say, and none of my words were coming out right. I was making this whole thing worse, and I didn’t think that was even remotely possible.
“I don’t need your help,” she said.
“Please.” I reached out for her but she stepped backward. “You have to tell Luke.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t. And if you tell him, that will be it, Hannah. I’ll never be able to forgive you for that. Our friendship will be over forever.”
She turned around and walked to the car. She got in, turned the key in the ignition, and backed out of the parking space. And then she rolled down the window. “Tell Luke to text me when he’s ready to go.”
By Wednesday, Luke’s video was everywhere. Everyone at school was talking about it. And everyone had one question for me: Who was that girl in the background who hugged him at the end?
I called Hannah a friend of ours and left it at that.
Day 300, 137 to go
On Thursday morning, I sat on the living room couch, turned on the TV, and flipped to channel 106. Mom handed me a mug of black coffee and settled in next to me with one of her own.
The Good Day LA theme music came on. The two anchors took turns reading the relevant news, and then they flashed on Luke and Hannah, back in the greenroom, smiling and waving. They cut to commercial. When the show returned, the two of them were sitting next to each other on a tan couch.
Luke looked nice, dressed in dark gray jeans and a bright blue button-down shirt that showed off his eyes. His hair looked especially good. His loose curls had the perfect amount of definition, and I wondered if someone had styled it with product or something before the show.
And then there was Hannah. She looked so prim and proper in a flowy white dress with tiny gray dots all over it, like she and Luke color coordinated on purpose. Her scoop-neck collar dipped just low enough to reveal the cross necklace she always wore.
She settled in on the couch and talked about seeing him pull up in front of the window that night. “I happened to be up getting water.”
She talked about watching his car swerve before it came to a stop against the curb. “He was right under my streetlight. I ran out there as fast as I could. He wasn’t moving or breathing, and I could tell he was hurt, so I ran inside to call nine-one-one and get my parents.”
Then Luke talked about floating in the water. “And then, out of nowhere, I heard Hannah’s voice. She said something I’ll never forget.” And then, as if they’d rehearsed this, she looked right into the camera and said, “I told him, ‘You’re not finished here.’”
The talk-show hosts sighed into their respective microphones at the exact same time, and that triggered a collective sigh from the audience. Luke shot Hannah a smile.
I pretended to stick my finger down my throat.
When the noise died down, Luke said, “When I got home from the hospital, I felt lost. And just…really sad. I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about what happened to me, because they didn’t really want to hear it. Everyone wanted everything to go back to normal.”
By “everyone,” Luke meant me.
I thought about the night I’d gone to his house for Calletti Spaghetti after, when I sat in his bed and he showed me articles about athletes who had died from their injuries. I told him to stop. And when he first returned to school, we stood in the hallway and I convinced him to go to the diner with me. “We’ll treat that place like a time machine,” I’d said. “The second we walk through that door and sit down in our booth, it’s two weeks ago. Nothing bad happened, no one got hurt, and nothing’s going to happen.” Even that first morning in the hospital, when the nurse said he almost died, and Luke whispered, “I did.” I’d heard him. But I never asked him what he meant by that.
If I’d let him talk, would he have told me everything he’d told Hannah?
I’d spent the last few weeks blaming those ten minutes for the friendship that sprang up between the two of them, but maybe I was the one to blame after all.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Luke continued. “I was so afraid to fall asleep. I was certain if I did, I wouldn’t wake up. And then Hannah suggested making the video, and as soon as I did, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. That video wasn’t supposed to be for anyone but me, but now I’m glad it got out. It’s helping me to talk about it.”
He looked so certain. So convinced he’d done the right thing by telling Hannah. Telling the world. And it felt like a knife twisting in my heart.
Every so often, Hannah looked over at Luke, and damn, the camera guy loved it when she did that. He’d start with a close-up of her face, then pan to Luke’s, and then pull back when the two of them smiled at each other like lovestruck kids.