Chapter 15 #2
The passenger door was held shut by a bent stretch of guardrail, so I had to climb into the ruined car through the broken window.
The empty seat was littered with bluish shards of glass, but none of them cut me as I lowered myself into the burning vehicle, sat cross-legged beside him even as the air blackened with smoke and the fire roared under the crushed hood.
I was careful not to touch him. I didn’t want to take him before his time. Corbin was fading fast, but I sensed that there was still a little more he had left to say and do in this world. I wanted to give it to him, even though I knew I was expected to be efficient, composed.
Up close, I saw that he wasn’t far from my own age. “Am I going to die?”
I saw no reason to lie to him. I felt like the least I could give him was honesty. Later, I would wonder if that made me cruel. If I should’ve said something else, given him a bit of hope to cling to in his final moments, even if it was just a lie.
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “You’re going to die.”
Through the shattered windshield and the bright plumes of fire, I saw the dark suggestions of people. I could hear their voices, but their words and faces were distorted by the roaring flames. This, I suspected, was by design. Corbin and I had gone to a place that few others could follow.
In this liminal slip of nothingness between life and death, we were alone.
“I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to anyone,” said Corbin.
He was crying now, and there was blood collecting in the shell of his ear, more of it dribbling from his nostrils.
He was choking on it, struggling to breathe.
His chest, crushed inward by the force of the crash, rose and fell faster and faster.
He was suffering, and I was letting him.
The pain in my hand built until it felt like a knife was splitting through my palm. I clenched it into a fist, tears stinging my eyes—tears of pain and grief and frustration.
I didn’t want to be the person who had to do this.
But if I didn’t, I would become the person who let him suffer, which seemed even worse.
“Help me,” said Corbin, and my god was he young.
We were all so young. Him and Adeline, Jasmine, even Stewart and Elizabeth.
No amount of time was enough, I realized.
It seemed like a cruel cosmic mistake that we could be so full of life and hope, that our minds could expand and consume so much knowledge, that our hearts could hold so much for so many people… and then one day just stop.
“It hurts,” said Corbin again, and the flames were starting on him now, though they left me untouched. “It hurts so bad.”
That was the push I needed. “I’ll make it stop.”
My hand shifted across the center console, brushing past the shattered glass.
Corbin’s hand, burnt and sticky with blood, rested on his knee.
I touched it, and when I did, my vision went dark, and I felt myself fall through time, through the remnants of memories half-formed until I found my way to something vivid, my soul fitting into a body, a life that didn’t belong to me.
I stood on the edge of a beach, looking out over a sun-licked ocean. The waves were gentle, and when they rushed my feet, I felt like I was moving down the shore. I turned to look behind me, saw a woman whose name I didn’t know. But her face was as familiar to me as my own.
My mother.
She was sitting on a makeshift picnic blanket, just a fleece throw stretched out on the shore, weighted down with buckets of sand and a couple of beer cans.
There was a little girl in her lap, my sister.
She had fat cheeks, legs like stubby little sausages, round feet stuffed into plastic sandals.
I turned to go to them when a big wave broke and snatched my legs out from under me.
The water crested over my head. I saw black.
When I surfaced, I was older, sitting in my car. The windshield wasn’t broken. There was no fire or smoke. No sirens screaming. The night was quiet.
Someone had rolled the windows down, and I could hear crickets humming in the nearby bushes.
In the passenger seat was a boy peering at me through dark lashes.
He looked…tentative, like he was standing on a precipice, deciding whether or not he wanted to jump.
His mouth was parted open, and I touched it, my thumb trembling a little as I ran it back and forth along his lower lip.
I leaned into him and fell into complete and utter oblivion.
I woke a moment later, lying on the side of the highway, to the sound of distant sirens.
I sat up, and the world spun and blurred before my eyes.
I felt heat and saw that the car was completely engulfed in flames, blazing as bright as a star.
A harsh scent, burnt rubber and gas, filled my lungs and made my eyes water.
I saw the remnants of Corbin, a dark figure wrapped in fire.
I screamed and reached for him, but Riley caught hold of my shoulders and shook me so hard it hurt.
The pain was enough to bring me back to myself.
Shiloh materialized in front of me, brushing Riley aside as she did. She took me by the chin, forced me to look at her instead of the burning car.
Her eyes were wide with…was that fear? “Roslyn, we need to get out of here. Now.”
I nodded and stood up, a little surprised that my legs were firm enough to carry my weight.
Shiloh guided me to her pickup truck, through the stagnant traffic, and buckled me into the passenger seat.
I tried to turn back, to get one final look at Corbin, but all I saw was a storm of bright and hungry flames.