Chapter Five
Five
FORWARD. FORWARD. FORWARD. There is no other direction when you’re running. There is only what’s ahead. My blue Sauconys hit the pavement over and over in a monotonous rhythm. Keep going. Don’t look back. Keep going.
My legs start to burn, hot and prickly. I glance at my Apple Watch. I’m doing a six-minute mile, but I don’t slow down. I just go harder, faster.
It’s that weird time of day when school’s over but the adults are still at work so no one’s really out. The tree-lined streets are quiet. Like maybe if I tried, I could imagine there had been some sort of mass extinction and I was the only one left on earth.
I keep running, forcing my legs to carry me farther and farther from home.
There’s this thing that I do sometimes. A stupid thing. I don’t do it very often, but every once in a while something comes over me, and I feel like if I don’t do it I’m going to float away. Like I just have to, or I’ll explode into myself. Like right now.
The sidewalk stretches on for a while. I could do it now. I close my eyes. But I keep running, even faster. I don’t throw my arms out like wings or anything. I’m not a fucking idiot. But I do let my hands open, just slightly, to feel the wind between my fingers.
Faster. Faster.
My feet hit the ground in solid, even strokes, exactly like we practiced when I was still on the track team.
When I was still captain. But I don’t think about that.
I just keep my eyes closed and think about the wind.
I could be anywhere right now. On any planet.
In the darkness of my mind with the air blowing over my face, there is no up or down.
No sky. No ground. There’s just me. Anything could happen.
It’s terrifying—not seeing what’s coming next—but it also feels so fucking good.
I usually only do it for a couple of seconds. Play chicken with myself like this. But today, I push it. Push it hard enough to stop seeing Liam’s curly black head ducking into that car with Cameron. To erase Ms. Jegstrup knocking into her coffee. To get their names out of my head.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Si—
My shoe hits something and I trip. And then the air that was in my fingers and in my hair is underneath me too. I’m off the ground. Flying. And for a second I think, This must be what it feels like.
“JESUS, THAT’S A LOT OF BLOOD,” a voice says. The voice sounds worried. But it also sounds confident. And warm. Like a honey voice. I want to poke my finger in the voice.
I open my eyes. “My head hurt.” Huh. That sentence sounds weird. “My head hurt,” I try again. Still weird. But why?
“You hit your head. Really hard,” the voice says.
The voice is a boy. He is golden. He also looks like honey. I stick my finger out and poke him in his honey dimple. Squish.
He grabs my wrist. Gently. Nicely. A nice grab. Nice fingers. “Hello, honey boy,” I say. Honey boy. I giggle.
Honey boy has sweat on his forehead. Little honey beads.
“I think you’re concussed.”
He pulls out a phone. I smack it out of his hands. “Who’re you calling, honey boy?”
Honey boy looks panicked but also like he might smile. “I’m googling the nearest hospital. Shit, it’s like forty-five minutes away.”
Hospital.
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
My brain snaps back together and I sit up. “Oh Jesus.” I put my hand on my head. It’s warm and sticky and, shit, that is definitely a little—I look at my crimson fingertips—a maybe-not-so-little river of blood trickling down my forehead.
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Just relax. I’m taking care of it.” I look up and shit fuck shit again because “honey boy” is Peter. This is humiliating. I want to dissolve into a puddle and seep into the sewage grate.
He puts his phone back in his pocket and runs his hands through his honey-colored (Jesus Christ) hair. “Do you think you can stand? I’m going to drive you to the hospital.”
A jolt of panic shoots through my chest. “No!” I say. “No hospitals.” I can’t go to the hospital. Those places … they’re a sea of pink. My hands shake. I can’t fucking go there.
“Sydney, I have to take you to the hospital.” His voice is solid. Firm. “Your head is cracked open. That’s generally not a good thing.”
My heart starts to race. “I’m fine.” There’s no way. No way in hell. I’d rather bleed out on this curb than walk into the clock shitshow that is a hospital.
“Sydney …” he starts again.
I grab his arm. “Please.”
He startles, his eyes flicking to my hand gripping his (surprisingly toned) arm. I let go and clear my throat. “Hospitals just creep me out, okay? I’m not going.”
Peter squints at me. “Who’s the president of the United States?”
“Your mom.”
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Fine. You don’t have to go. But I’m taking you home.”
“That’s not necessary,” I say. I stand up to prove how unnecessary it is and then the world starts spinning again.
He grabs my elbow. “Yeah, okay. So my car is right down there.” He points to an old black Jetta. “I’m going to drive you home.”
“Whatever,” I say. But I let him keep his hand on my elbow.
He opens the door, tosses a stack of books into the back, and eases me down into the seat like I’m some fragile grandma. He leans down over me. His face inches from mine. “What the fuck are you doing?”
His eyebrows go up and the tiniest bit of pink flashes on his cheeks. “I’m buckling you in.” He holds up the end of the seatbelt like it’s evidence.
“I’ve got it, good Christ, I’m not a toddler.” I take the seatbelt and to my absolute mortification it takes me three tries to get it to latch.
Peter bites his bottom lip like he’s holding in a laugh. I get this psychotic little-kid impulse to yank on his hair.
“The seatbelt’s fucked up,” I say, crossing my arms.
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get that totally normal latch fixed.”
A flame of annoyance burns in my stomach. “Can we go now?”
He nods, shuts the door on me, and literally jogs around to the driver’s seat. It’s so over the top. It’s like the boy’s never seen a gushing head wound before.
He pushes the engine on and starts messing with my AC vents. “Are you hot?” He glances over at me and angles his vents toward my face too. “You don’t need to pass out from heatstroke on top of the concussion.”
“I don’t have a concussion,” I say.
“Sure. All that … ‘honey boy’ stuff was totally you.”
I suck in my cheeks. “Okay, I was obviously disoriented. But I’m fine now.”
He hands me his phone. “Here. You can put your address in.”
I hand it back to him. “Can you unlock it?”
“I don’t keep it locked.” He says this casually as if that is not the most sociopathic behavior I’ve ever heard of.
My mouth drops. “You’re joking.”
He shrugs. “I don’t have anything to hide.”
Jesus, this guy is next-level. “Are you a Mormon or something?”
He laughs. “No.”
His smile is so easy. Like he’s so … unburdened. He’s got to be part of a cult. “Remind me not to drink Kool-Aid at your house.”
He looks sideways at me, his green eyes crinkling just slightly. “You’re coming to my house?”
“It’s an expression.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m pretty sure ‘Remind me not to drink Kool-Aid at your house’ was Gandhi, right? Or maybe it was Oscar Wilde.”
I plug his phone into his car. “Just drive, weirdo.”
“I think you mean ‘honey boy.’” He winks at me. Like an actual literal wink. I fight the urge to open the door and fling myself out of the moving car and onto the street.
Fucking hell, this fall might actually kill me after all.