The Truth About Keeping Secrets(71)

The car continued to disobey Heath, and he waited, but then shifted his attention to us. His eyes flickered; he wasn’t finished.

‘You have to get up,’ I said to June. She didn’t even try to move, her eyes struggling to focus on anything, so I dragged her up while she tripped over her feet. ‘You gotta. Come on. Come on.’

‘June, let me help you,’ Heath said behind us.

Thunder boomed somewhere far away.

June and I scrambled, and we tried to run – I hated it, didn’t want to run, but we had no choice.

It didn’t even matter though. June was too slow, and Heath was too fast, and we had barely gotten into the forest before she screamed. The most awful, animalistic sound, the sort of sound that reminds you that we’re no different from mice, that we’re not gods, just mammals, that when we scream it all sounds the same, and pain is pain, and Heath had June’s left arm clenched in his fist and he squeezed and tugged and ripped.

That’s when I heard the sirens.

Heath did, too, because he dropped June like she was nothing, climbed back into the car and tried to start it again, but the tyres had now disappeared up to halfway, and hardly even turned when he floored the accelerator.

Maybe this was the endorphin rush that comes with pain, that says shush, it’s OK, but I was almost revelling in Heath’s panic; the sirens were closer now, and I had June in my arms, and it occurred to me I was watching him lose everything.

I looked down at June, her eyes screwed shut; never before this had I noticed how human she was, how breakable.

The police emerged from the tree line.

There were two of them, both carrying flashlights; one illuminated the car, the other June and me. I thought of how pitiful we must look to them, these two girls huddled together, soaked with mud and rainwater and blood. For the first time, I assessed myself, put a hand up again to the warm spot on my cheek, followed the trail down, down …

Once the officer had eyed us over, he craned his neck to speak into the walkie-talkie on his chest.

Where do I start? That was the only thing I remember thinking, the only thing I thought that wasn’t just red, but a series of words: Where do I start?

I remember sitting with June, her head propped up on my shoulder, rain lashing at us while the lights grew brighter and brighter.

Shouting.

More sirens. Not police – ambulances.

Heath, being told to get out of the sinking car.

I remember ‘You’ll be all right, girls. We’ll get you fixed up.’

Mom. She was there. She’d come with the cops from the station. Sobbed. Held me gently. Didn’t even worry about getting mud on her clothes. ‘You’re OK, baby.’

Heath, being taken away.

He’d scared the whole neighbourhood, they said. Got calls from everywhere, all about some lunatic driver. Even folks a mile away had heard a crash.

The sky was so bright over the river. Like fireflies.

The stars are close, but not close enough to take sides, I realized, as I stepped over the fallen tree at the fork in the trail, the splinters of our names cast aside and buried in wreckage.





Chapter 18


They separated us when we got to the hospital.

I’d asked to stay with June, but she was in worse shape than I was and they were sort of rushing her around, a towel draped over her shoulders – to warm her up, sure, but I think also to conceal the failure of human anatomy that her lower left arm had become. We said a hurried goodbye and a nurse, probably noticing the way my face fell, said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll see her soon.’ She didn’t know anything that had happened. She had no idea that I’d already mentally lost June and that I worried if she slipped out of the hospital doors without me I might never see her again, that if we weren’t pressed shoulder to shoulder something could worm its way between us. But something about the easiness of her words calmed me down.

She led Mom and me to a cramped examination room that smelled like alcohol and flu.

And once the door shut, Mom held my face in her hands and just looked at me. Her eyes flicked back and forth, trying to find something in my face, something in me, and I wasn’t sure what, so I just looked at her as gently and as honestly as I could.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. For making her worry. For being unfair. For the fact that any of this had happened to us at all.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry this has been so difficult. I would – God, Sydney, if I could take this all from you I’d do it in a second. Those –’ she rubbed my cheeks – ‘bags under your eyes …’

‘A parting gift.’ We both laughed – less laughs and more quick exhales but the moment was significant in that it existed at all, despite everything, despite the tears pooling on her face that suggested the last thing she wanted to do now was laugh.

Mom picked a dry clump of mud out of my hair. ‘I can’t even tell you how afraid I was when I got the call. I can’t even begin.’

‘I’m OK, Mom.’

‘I know. But my mind has already gone to that place, and that takes a toll on you. When it’s about your daughter –’

‘I know.’ I lowered myself on to the examination table and tried to lean back, the paper crinkling underneath me. My back screamed. I managed to lay my head down, and looked at the ceiling. There was a sort of mural taped to it of a night sky, stars and planets and galaxies all swirling against navy blue.