The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried(17)

The driver is barely older than me, and he’s out of his car crying that he didn’t see the guy and why was he in the road and going on about how it isn’t his fault. The man is half on the sidewalk, face up. His neck is turned at an impossible angle and his right arm is twisted and his right leg is bent and he’s bleeding from somewhere. From everywhere. The driver tries to move the man out of the road, but I yell at him not to.

An hour passes in a second. Other people stop to help. One of them is a nurse. Paramedics and police arrive. The medics take over the drunk guy’s care, the police take my statement. It’s a blur, and then they’re gone. They’re gone, and I’m in the parking lot of Monty’s with July, who wisely disappeared before the police saw her.

“You okay?”

I think I am. And then July rests her hand on my neck, and I’m bent over throwing up in the bushes. Everything comes out.

I stand, and July hands me a napkin and a bottled water, and I don’t ask where she got them from. I’m just so grateful I can rinse out my mouth.

“Now I’m okay,” I say.

“First time seeing a dead body that fresh?” July asks. She adds a fake chuckle, and I know she’s not actually so cruel as to joke at a time like this and is only attempting to get my mind off what happened.

I spit and then say, “He wasn’t dead.”

A crease forms between July’s eyes as she frowns. “There’s no way he survived.”

Everything feels like waking up from a dream so real that I can’t tell if this is reality. The lights seem harsher, the air hotter. Even July’s voice sounds sharper and yet distant at the same time. “He should have died,” I say. “His neck was broken. That’s what the medic said.”

“Then how—”

“I don’t know. She told me she’s been seeing it all night. People who should be dead but aren’t. No one’s dying.” I look into July’s blue eyes because she’s also supposed to be dead but isn’t.

July takes me by the arm and guides me to the passenger side of the car.

“What’re you doing?”

“We should go,” July says. “And I’m driving.”

“I can drive.”

“Doubtful.” She glances at my hands. They’re trembling and I can’t stop them, so I give her the keys.

July takes a minute to adjust the seat and the mirrors and get familiar with where the lights are.

“Do you know what it means if people stop dying?” I ask.

“Your parents quit pressuring you to join the family business?”

“I’m being serious.”

“I guarantee death hasn’t stopped.”

“Says the girl who was dead yesterday.” It was one level of weird when it was only July. Yes, it freaked me out and I wanted to understand why it was happening, but it was an isolated event that I could sort of pretend was a miracle to keep from losing my mind. But if death is suspended somehow? How do I deal with that? It’s too much for my brain to process. Compared to that, July returning to life is hardly an issue.

July starts the engine and puts it in reverse, but she keeps her foot on the break. “Hey,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Remember the concert I took you to for your birthday?”

I nod. “Strange Attractors. Best concert ever.”

“I got the money to buy those tickets by selling your bio midterm to Justin Blake.” She pauses. “Sorry.”





JULY

I NEVER DROVE LIKE A grandma until I saw someone get plowed into by a speeding car. I should be shaking. My brain should be flooding my body with adrenaline or whatever chemicals it spews out during a crisis, but it’s not. Add freaking out to the list of things I can’t do since I woke up at DeLuca and Son’s. Alive, not-dead, or whatever the hell I am, I still can’t get the accident out of my mind. I should have tried harder to reach the guy. Assuming for a nanosecond that Dino’s remotely right, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been hit by a car. If I’m dead, I can’t get deader. But what if I broke some bones? Would those knit back together?

No. It’s pointless thinking about this because I’m not dead. I may not have the answers, but I know “July’s dead” isn’t one of them.

Dino’s phone is blowing up, and he’s texting replies furiously. “Rafi?”

“My mom.”

“You need to go home?”

He shakes his head. “She’s checking on me and reminding me that your funeral is tomorrow—like I could forget—and telling me that she’s set my suit out.”

“Oh.”

I don’t know where to go, so I drive on muscle memory and we wind up at Walmart, which is where we used to go after Monty’s, seeing as it was the only place open near Palm Shores late at night. Dino gives me a curious look, and I shrug.

“You got a better idea?”

“No,” he says. “It just seems like we should be trying to work out why you’re a walking corpse, not killing time at Walmart.”

“Where should we go, Dino? To the shadowy secret science base at the edge of town that doesn’t exist because this isn’t a movie and some helpful dweeb isn’t going to come along and enlighten us about our situation with a lengthy expository monologue seconds before he tragically dies a meaningless but horribly graphic death?”