Chapter 43 #2
“It’s because I pushed her, too.” Barb sounded panicked, and immediately she went to Lorelei and crouched down. “Hey. Hey. Are you okay?” she said, touching Lorelei’s shoulder. She looked back up at Nicolette, her eyes terrified. “She’s not waking up. What do we do?”
Before Nicolette could answer, a terrible pain—sharp now, not dull—pierced her lower abdomen. She doubled over. “My stomach hurts,” she said, barely able to get the words out. “It really, really hurts.”
“Is it the baby?” The panic on Barb’s face deepened as she looked back and forth between her and Lorelei. “What do you . . . what do I . . . ?”
“Stay with Lorelei,” Nicolette said, and then moaned as another cramp came on. “Check for a pulse.”
“But why wouldn’t she have a pulse?” Barb sounded like she was on the verge of hysteria. “She’s not dead, she probably has a concussion or something—”
“Jesus, Barb, just check!”
Barb turned back to Lorelei, whose eyes were closed, her head turned to the side at an awkward angle. Through the haze of pain she was feeling, Nicolette watched as Barb pressed two fingers to Lorelei’s neck like they’d been taught in last year’s health class. She then moved to Lorelei’s wrist.
“I can’t find one,” Barb said, looking up. “But maybe I’m not doing it right. Can you try?”
Another cramp seized her, and Nicolette slid to the floor, her back against the wall. The pain was so intense, like period cramps times a million. She couldn’t answer. Because she couldn’t talk.
“I don’t know what to do!” Barb wailed, in full panic mode now. “Should I find Hawk? Do you think he’s still here? Oh god . . .”
Nicolette felt like she might pass out. They needed to get out to the pay phone by the refreshment stand. They needed to call 9–1–1. Was Hawk still here? What about Marty? But she couldn’t say the words. She couldn’t focus on anything but her own pain.
“Maybe it’s not her head.” Barb’s voice sounded high pitched, almost squeaky. “Her neck is . . . it’s bent funny. I don’t want to keep touching her in case I do something wrong and she ends up paralyzed. That can happen, right?”
“You have to go find a phone,” Nicolette finally managed to say. “There’s one inside the refreshment stand. She needs an ambulance. And . . . and I think I do, too.”
The room was beginning to spin, the edges of the room blurred and fading. She was going to faint. She was going to . . .
“What’s going on in here?” a voice said seemingly out of nowhere, and Nicolette opened her eyes, her vision momentarily clearing. “Marty said you were all fighting. I could hear you shouting from outside.”
It was Daniel Hawksfield, standing just inside the girls’ bathroom, his face a mask of concern.
Despite everything, relief flooded through Nicolette’s body, because Hawk was here, and Hawk would know how to handle this.
In that moment, he was just their teacher again, the adult in the room who was wise and in charge, which meant that she and Barb no longer had to decide what to do.
“Lorelei fell,” Barb blurted. “She fell and hit her head.”
“Move aside, Barb,” Hawk said, and Barb scrambled away. He crouched down beside Lorelei and started checking for a pulse, his fingers pressing against her throat in a different spot from where Barb had checked. He tried another spot, and then looked up. “You were all shouting my name. Why?”
Barb blinked, as if she hadn’t been expecting that question.
Nicolette clutched her stomach. “They know,” she said, forcing the words out. “About you and me. And the baby.”
Hawk froze. Nicolette thought she saw a flash of panic on his face, but it was gone before she could be certain. Slowly, he turned his head toward her, his eyes locking on hers. There was no anxiety on his face now. No anger. No confusion.
There was . . . nothing.
“There is no you and me, Nicolette.” Hawk’s voice was cold, devoid of any compassion.
He sounded exactly like he did when she told him she was pregnant.
“And you shouldn’t be spreading lies like that.
It could cost me my job, and my freedom.
As your teacher, I offered to help you with your situation, not take responsibility for it.
Are you hearing me? I need to hear you say you understand me, Nicolette. ”
She opened her mouth to respond, but another cramp forced her to double over. All she could do was moan. She curled into a ball on her side. It felt like she might die here too, right on the sticky bathroom floor mere feet away from Lorelei, who still hadn’t moved.
But unlike her friend, who was right about Daniel Hawksfield all along, maybe Nicolette deserved this.
Hawk turned back to check on Lorelei, his fingers pressing multiple places on her limp wrist. He looked up at Barb. “What exactly happened?”
“We were fighting and we pushed her and Lorelei fell.” The words gushed out of Barb in a rabbity rush. “She hit the back of her head on the toilet seat. It was . . . it was an accident.”
Very carefully, Hawk slipped a hand underneath Lorelei’s head. A second later, he yanked it away. His palm was covered in blood. So much blood. Both Nicolette and Barb gasped at the sight of it.
“Is she dead?” Barb asked, her hands covering her mouth. She looked horrified.
Hawk looked up. “She’s gone.”
Lorelei’s dead?
Nicolette could not grasp this. She was fine a moment ago. Yelling, yes. Unreasonable, maybe. But she couldn’t be dead. Her birthday was next week. She was turning sixteen, the first of the three of them to do so. No. No. No.
Another cramp seized Nicolette and she moaned. “It hurts,” she gasped. “It really hurts.”