Push

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I STAND AT MY BEDROOM WINDOW AND WATCH THE EXPLORER pull out of the drive. Carly opens the window and hangs her arm out to wave wildly. I wave back, feeling like the whole night was surreal, but it isn’t until the car disappears around the corner that I slump against the wall.

It’s like Carly took all my energy with her when she left.

Between the Drau, and Carly almost dying, and the fight with Jackson, there just isn’t much left of me. I should take a hot shower or flop in front of the TV and watch a show or maybe just crawl into bed and sleep for a week.

But I don’t do any of those things. I stay where I am, my cheek resting against the window frame as I unpack the crazy that’s crawling around in my head like a bunch of centipedes.

I start with the things I know.

The Drau pushed through into my world, my real world.

Everything the Committee said about how big of a threat they are is true.

Carly almost died.

Someone healed her, but Jackson doesn’t believe it was him. Which leaves the possibility that the respawn did the trick. Except, Carly isn’t part of the game. She doesn’t respawn. And even if she did, it wouldn’t explain the hint of Drau gray I saw flash in her eyes.

Which brings me to all the things I don’t know: Who healed Carly? Exactly how trustworthy is the Committee? If the green-eyed girl is a shell, why does she keep helping me? Because the Drau want to use me as an original donor?

I guess Jackson could be right about that, but if that’s what she wants, she could have fought my team the first time I met her, when I was lying on the ground, bleeding, dying. She could have fought them and killed them—maybe—and taken me then. But she chose to run away.

A quick tapping snares my attention, and only then do I realize I’m drumming my fingertips against the windowsill. I force myself to stop. Then I force myself to mentally catalogue what I know, starting from the beginning. I end up with questions and more questions, like an infinite circle spinning around.

But at least I have a few answers now, too. I know more about the game and about the Committee and their limitations. I know more about myself, my weaknesses, my strengths.

The chill from outside penetrates the glass. I shiver, but I don’t move away. It’s like I’m waiting for something but I don’t know what.

Lie.

I do know.

I’m waiting for the prickle of awareness that will tell me Jackson’s there, on my street, watching my window. I’ve felt it before, more than once. Not in a creeper way. He had good reasons. I kind of wish he’d find a reason right now.

Once, he left me a gift—a copy of my favorite manga, wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it from the weather—on the flat roof of the overhang that covers the front porch.

Once, I looked out my window to find him sitting cross-legged on that same porch roof, his honey-gold hair gleaming in the moonlight, shades firmly in place, even at night.

That was the night he snuck in my bedroom window. The night he lifted his shirt and bared his abs—and his navel—to prove to me he wasn’t a shell.

The night he kissed me for the first time.

Not on my lips. That came later. The first kiss was something else entirely.

I remember it. I remember the way he grabbed my wrist and turned my hand over, then lowered his head and pressed his lips to my palm.

I remember the shock of electricity that danced through me.

Then he moved his lips to the crease of my wrist. I stood perfectly still, my blood hammering through my veins.

I remember the way he made me feel; I’d never felt like that before. I wanted him to do it again. Instead, he climbed out the window and took off into the night.

I close my eyes now and press the inside of my wrist against my mouth, wishing Jackson were here, wishing we hadn’t parted the way we did.

He just faced down what amounted to his sister’s ghost. I hate that I know he has to be suffering. And I hate that I know I added to his pain. I wasn’t there for him, didn’t offer much in the way of comfort. I’m not feeling very proud of that.

I grab a hoodie, climb out my window, and sit on the roof with my back pressed against the bricks, just like Mom and I used to do when I was little. We’d sit out here and stare at the stars. She’d try to name them. She didn’t always get them right, and it really didn’t matter.

Staring up at the stars now, I can’t help but wonder how many of them support worlds like Earth. Worlds like my ancestors came from. Or the Drau.

I wish Mom were here right now. I wish I could talk to her. I wouldn’t be able to tell her about the game, but I could tell her about the gray fog, the panic attacks, the way I try so hard to control everything in my life, as if that will keep me safe.

I could tell her about Jackson.

She could help me figure it all out.

But she isn’t here, and I haven’t felt this alone in a really long time. I haven’t let myself feel this alone.

I play with my phone, trying to decide if I should call him or not.

Not.

He said he needed some time on his own.

An hour? A day? A month?

There’s no one for me to ask.

I love Dad so much. But I can’t talk to him the same way I talked to Mom. It’s just different. They’re different.

I bend my knees up and hug them. “I miss you, Mommy,” I whisper. “I miss you so much.”

It isn’t until I’m shivering from the cold that I realize Dad’s been gone way longer than the twenty minutes it should have taken him to drop Carly, get milk, and make it back home.

Maybe he got caught up talking to Mrs. Conner when he dropped Carly off.

I pull out my phone and call him. Through my open window, I hear the faint sound of his ringtone inside the house. He forgot his phone. Again.

And the battery’s probably almost dead. Again. He has a habit of forgetting to charge it.

I duck back in through the window and head to his room. No phone on the dresser, but there’s a low oval dish that Mom used to keep potpourri in. I stare at it for a minute, really seeing it for the first time in ages. It’s full, but not with aromatic leaves. There are matchbooks in there.

I exhale a shocked breath. Dad wouldn’t smoke. He wouldn’t. He quit as soon as Mom was diagnosed. I don’t believe he’d start again.

I pick up a matchbook and open the flap. All the matchsticks are there. Same with the next one and the next. So he’s just collecting them; he’s not using them. I run my fingers over the glossy covers. Blue Mill Tavern. Dante’s Inferno. La Ronda Bar. Elk Bar. Dad must like that one; he has at least a dozen of their orange matchbooks.

My stomach clenches. I feel like I’m going to puke. All those nights Dad’s been out, he hasn’t been going to AA meetings. He’s been going to bars.

Is that where he is now? Is that why he’s so late?

I remember what Dad said to me back at the beginning of September, the words playing through my thoughts. I don’t have a problem. It’s all under control. I’m not one of those after-school specials, passed out on the couch, with three empty bottles of gin on the floor.

No, he’s not passed out on the couch. And the bottles aren’t gin. They’re vodka, like the one I found in his office when I was vacuuming.

He’s been lying to me. Lying to himself.

Am I supposed to forgive him for that? I need him. And he’s nowhere to be found. Not even when he’s sitting right across the dinner table from me.

I give up on finding his phone and stalk downstairs to the den. I pace to the front window, pull back the drapes, and stare at the empty street. Then I pace back to the couch.

I dial Carly’s number. She doesn’t answer.

I put my phone on the coffee table, line it up parallel to the converter, rearrange Dad’s fishing magazines so they’re perfectly straight. With a cry, I draw back my arm and swipe the surface, sending everything tumbling to the floor.

Then I pace back to the window and just stand there, waiting for the flare of headlights.

When the cruiser turns into my driveway, I’m not surprised. When the two police officers get out and walk to my front porch, settling their hats on their heads as they move, I’m not surprised.

And when I open the door and they start to speak, I’m not surprised.

I’m numb.

I don’t hear their words. They run together into a blur of sound.

I struggle to focus.

I pull the door wide as they step inside, removing their hats. Why did they put them on just to take them off again? It feels like such an important question.

“No shoes in the house,” I mumble.

I think they ask me my name, or maybe who I am. “Miki,” I say. “I’m Miki Jones.”

One of them asks me something else. I blink. Stare at them. He asks again. They want to know who else was in the car. She didn’t have ID. Do I know who she is?

“She didn’t need her wallet because she was just coming here,” I say. “She didn’t need money or anything. She didn’t want to go to the dance.”

The officer nods like I’m making perfect sense, but I think that maybe I’m not.

“Can you tell me her name?”

“Carly Conner.” I pause and stare at them and they stare back at me like they want something more. I rattle off her home phone number and address because that’s all I can think to do.

They keep talking. I stop listening. Not on purpose. I just . . . shut off.

Then one word jumps out at me: hospital. I nod. Out of habit, I pull a coat out of the front closet, get my key, lock the door.

But I’m not here.

I’m not living this moment.

It’s just a shell of me walking to the police car, staring straight ahead, feeling nothing. Nothing at all.

I sit in the waiting room, my forearms on my thighs, my head hanging down. There’s a TV in the corner, set to some local news show, droning softly. I can’t hear the words. I don’t care about the words.

I’m alone. Just me and my thoughts.

The two officers were in the hall until a few minutes ago. I heard little snippets of their conversation.

. . . head-on collision . . .

. . . blood-alcohol level point one eight . . .

. . . more than twice legal limit . . .

They’ve left. I don’t know when. I don’t even know how long I’ve been here.

I don’t know how bad things are. I don’t know anything about Dad or Carly other than they were both alive when they were brought in. I can only pray that’s still the case now.

When we got here, the officers spoke to someone, a woman, maybe a nurse. She pointed us here. They deposited me in a chair and went out in the hall.

I haven’t seen or heard from anyone since.

Not a nurse or a doctor. I want to go try to find someone to talk to, but I’m afraid to leave this spot in case someone comes to talk to me.

Burying my face in my hands, I try to make sense of things. How can it be that Carly survived a Drau attack only to be in a car crash a few hours later?

How could that happen?

It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

I need it to make sense.

There’s a commotion in the hall. I lift my head. Carly’s parents come into the room, clutching each other’s hands, clinging to each other. They look old. Really old. As if twenty years have passed instead of the handful of hours since I last saw Mrs. Conner.

I cringe inside.

This is my fault. I could have stopped it.

If I’d driven Carly myself.

If I’d made her call her mom for a ride.

If I’d made her sleep over.

If I’d checked to see if Dad had been drinking.

He said he wouldn’t drink and drive. Promised me. I believed him. I really believed him.

This is on me and I’m never going to be able to forgive myself.

I force myself to my feet, meeting Mrs. Conner’s gaze, expecting . . . I don’t know what. That she’ll scream at me? Hit me? Lose it totally.

She lunges forward. Grabs me. Drags me against her chest, her whole body trembling as she hugs me tight. “They’ll be okay,” she whispers. “We have to believe that. They’ll be okay.” Then she starts sobbing, holding me and sobbing, and all I can do is stand there and stare over her shoulder at the poster for flu vaccines that’s on the wall, because if I do anything else, I’m going to burst into a million tiny specks of nothing.

Pulling back, she studies my face. She’s talking, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. My ears buzz. My head feels like it’s going to explode. For a second, I’m terrified that I’m getting pulled. Then I realize it’s my anxiety taking over my senses. I’m just a bundle of raw nerves.

“What do you know?” she asks. I get that more from focusing on her lips than actually hearing the words.

What do I know? Not much.

“Did you talk to the police?” I ask. Silly question. Of course they talked to the police. How else would they have known to come here?

Mrs. Conner nods. “They phoned us as soon as you gave them Carly’s name. Have you seen a doctor? A nurse? Has anyone said anything?”

I shake my head.

“Did they tell you anything?” I ask.

“Not much at all. A nurse brought us here and they said someone would speak with us as soon as possible. She said Carly’s being sent for a CT scan and it could take a few hours for the results.”

“And an MRI,” Mr. Conner says, his voice gravelly and rough. “They told you nothing about your dad?”

How can he sound so kind? So concerned? Carly’s here. My dad was driving. I don’t know any details of the accident. If the police said, I don’t remember. All I know is what I overheard . . . that alcohol was involved. But here’s Mr. Conner, being so kind.

“Just that he’s alive. And doctors are with him.” I try to remember anything else the nurse said. “That he has two IVs and they need to do tests.”

With her arm around my shoulder, Mrs. Conner steers us both to the chairs opposite the TV. She keeps one arm around me and reaches her other hand across to hold my hand.

“I yelled at her,” she says.

It’s my turn to say, “She’ll be okay,” mostly because I have nothing else I can say.

Carly’s dad shoves his hand in his pocket and jiggles his change. Then he takes his hand out, stalks into the hall, stalks back in, jiggles his change some more.

“Coffee,” Carly’s mom says. Her husband stops pacing and looks at her. “I think we could all use some coffee.”

He nods, his face grim, and heads into the hall. “I’ll see if I can get any more information out of them.”

“He needs something to do,” she says once he’s gone.

So do I. I need to run. Or hit something. I need to make this better. Change it. Fix it.

And I can’t.

So I just sit beside Carly’s mom and stare at the fluvaccine poster.