Chapter 7 Audrey #3
At last, there was Micah. Beck grabbed her arm and headed for the exit, cutting a path for Jasmine and me. Finally, finally, we were outside. The air was cool and clear, and I made the mistake of looking at the sky, which made me woozy. I stumbled, grabbing on to Jasmine.
“What did you take?” she asked.
“Nothing! I smoked a tiny bit of weed with Derek, that’s all! And I had one beer, and it was disgusting and I didn’t finish it.” At least, I didn’t think I had.
It was only when we got to my car that I realized Micah was drunk. She leaned against the trunk and slid to the ground. “I probably shouldn’t drive,” she mumbled.
“What the hell, Micah?” I said, my voice shrill and tight. “You’re the designated driver.”
“Yeah, well, shit got serious in there. So what? You drive. It’s your car.”
“I can’t drive!” I yelled. “I’m high. I’ve never been high before, and I hate it.” I burst into tears.
“Okay, everyone calm down,” Beck said. “Jasmine, you’re sober, right? How much did you have to drink?”
Jasmine considered the question. “I had, like, one beer when we first got there. Another one around nine or so, but nothing but water since. I’m sober. But I’ve only driven a stick shift once.”
“Don’t look at me,” Beck said. “The only thing I ever drove was my grandfather’s tractor, and that was when I was six.”
“Micah, you suck,” I said. “Why did you get drunk? Huh? Why?”
“Chill, Audrey,” she said. “Just call your parents. They’ll do anything for their precious little princess.” She looked up at me, her eyes half shut already.
“Jasmine,” Beck said, “it’s, like, five miles to Audrey’s house. You can do it.”
“Okay, well, don’t blame me for grinding the gears,” she said.
We piled in the car, Micah and me in the back, Beck up front with Jasmine.
“I’ll be our DJ,” Beck said. “You know we do our best dancing in the car. Aha! ‘Lady Marmalade’!’” she began, grabbing the hairbrush I always kept in the glove compartment.
Holding it like a microphone, she proceeded to call all the sistas.
With a grind, Jasmine forced the car into gear, and off we went.
How many times had we sung this song during a sleepover, the four of us pretending to be Christina, Lil’ Kim, Mya and Pink?
Micah was messing up the lyrics. Should I be singing, too?
No! I was mad . . . about something. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window.
My mother was going to be so disappointed in me when we got home.
Could I pass for sober? Where were we again?
Right, right, the car. For a second, I thought we were in my room.
I closed my eyes and maybe fell asleep for a minute, then jerked awake.
Was the song still playing? “How fast are you going, Jasmine?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. There was the crescendo of Christina Aguilera’s voice—the best part of the song, didn’t we all wish we could sing like that?
Beck was really into it. She held the hairbrush in front of Jasmine’s face, and I couldn’t help a smile.
Jasmine shifted again, looking down at the stick, but sang along, asking if the guy in the song wanted to sleep with her.
Except in French. It was French, right? Or Spanish?
Suddenly, there were bright lights coming at us fast, or we were going too fast. Then the lights were right in my face, and there was a jolt and a horrible scraping sound, and our car was tumbling, the seat belt clenching my midsection.
A thousand thoughts flashed in a second—this was not good, my parents had just bought me this car, I hoped the damage wouldn’t be too bad, I had to pee.
A Dunkin’ Donuts cup flew through the air, and there were screams, and the crunching, smashing sound was horrible and so, so loud.
My window shattered in, bits of glass everywhere.
How were we still rolling? Was that my leg or Micah’s?
I saw trees and ferns, and there was more crunching .
. . and then, finally, we stopped, the car on its wheels again, rocking.
Missy Elliott was going through the singers’ names.
Did we just crash?
Jasmine was saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” her voice shrill and breathy. She got out of the car. “We have to call 911,” she said. “911. 911. 911.”
The car was a mess, dented in and glass everywhere and garbage and parts of the engine right there where the dashboard should be. Why was the engine there? Micah also looked befuddled. “What just happened?” she asked.
Opening my door—which worked just fine—I got out, my brain foggy.
The car looked like a stomped-on soda can.
Our path of destruction was marked by snapped saplings and torn-up soil.
Micah crawled out through the broken window and slid to the forest floor, then threw up.
Her side of the car—the passenger side—looked like it had been kicked in by a giant.
The headlights shone eerily into the dense woodland vegetation.
Ferns. Lots of ferns. There was a high-pitched whistling in my head. I didn’t feel stoned anymore.
We’d been in an accident, all right. A bad one. There’d been another car—had we hit it? It had happened so fast. I looked at the embankment and started climbing up.
Then Beck started screaming. “Oh God, my leg! My leg! Help me!”
Something was telling me to get up that embankment now.
“Audrey, help me!” Beck screamed, and her terror cut through my shock.
I looked through her unbroken window. Her jeans were torn and wet with something dark.
Coffee? No. Blood. It was blood, and it was spurting out of Beck’s leg with every beat of her heart, running down the seat.
Her face was completely white, and her leg looked like something a movie villain would throw his dog, muscle and tendons bulging out in a dark-red lump.
Something white was poking through the mess.
Everything went quiet for me then—Beck’s screams, Jasmine’s sobs, Micah’s retching. I was looking at Beck’s femur. The biggest bone in the body, my mother’s voice said. You can bleed to death if you break a femur.
She needed a tourniquet. I should be the one to do it, since I knew more than the average person when it came to medicine.
Of course I did. I was Dr. Kate’s daughter.
My hands went to my waist. No belt. I looked at Micah, who had a red bandanna in her dark hair.
I could work with that. I snatched it off her head, untied the knot, preternaturally calm, and grabbed a small branch from a tree we’d just mown down.
“Help me,” Beck said, her voice weak now. Jasmine was babbling to the police dispatcher on the other side of the car. Micah kept puking. I tried Beck’s door, which was crushed, then went around to the driver’s side and slid in.
Oh. That leg did not look . . . viable. The word that slid into my head. There was so much blood Beck was sitting in a puddle of it. She grabbed my arm, and her hand was clammy. She’s going into shock, I thought. Get moving.
I slid the bandanna under her blood-soaked leg, tied the ends around the stick and looked at Beck’s white, terrified face.
Her eyes were huge. “This will hurt,” I said, then twisted the stick.
Beck screamed and flailed, hitting me in the face.
Then she passed out. I turned the stick again and again until the bandanna was tight and the blood wasn’t pulsing out of Beck’s leg anymore.
I could hear sirens. Good. Help was coming. Jasmine, the smart one, had called for help right away.
“Jasmine, get in here and hold on to this,” I ordered. She climbed in and did as she was told, and I wriggled out past her.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice high and scared. “Stay here!”
“Just hold the stick and don’t let it unwind or she’ll bleed to death.”
“Oh my God!” she whimpered, but she stayed, smoothing Beck’s hair back from her face.
I had to get up to the road. I needed to. I stumbled up the steep side of the ravine, grabbing the plants to help me. I fell to my knees but kept going, digging my hands into the dirt. The sirens were louder now. At the top of the embankment, I finally hit level ground and burst onto the road.
There was the other car, the hood crushed against a huge maple tree, the windshield shattered, a back door hanging from its hinges. Something hissed from the hood. I stood there, my pulse rushing in my ears.
Another car had pulled up, and two people—grown-ups—were getting out. “Is everyone okay?” the woman asked. Her husband went over to the car, his phone to his ear. I started that way, too, but the guy waved me off. “Stay there,” he said. His wife put her arm around me.
“Help is on the way,” she said. “Is anyone hurt down there?”
“Yes. It’s bad,” I said, my voice monotone. “You should go down there.” She left my side.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the other car, the ruination of it.
I’d never envisioned what the phrase wrapped around a tree really meant.
But now I saw it. A wheel stuck out at a forty-five-degree angle.
The back of the car was normal looking, but the front was utterly mangled.
From below, I heard Beck screaming again, so I knew she was still alive.
That other car . . . I knew that car. The details were slow in coming to me, but the bumper sticker and the decal with the wings and the snakes .
. . a caduceus. That was the word. This was a dream, right?
So it would be okay. I’d probably fallen asleep at Derek’s party. He’d kissed me. My first kiss.
I approached the car slowly. The man had his hand on the crumpled hood, his head bent. Was he . . . praying? Don’t look, whispered a quiet, calm part of my brain. Stay where you are.
But I knew I was going to look, that what I saw would change my life. I was right.
There, in the driver’s seat of the ruined car, was my mother, and she was dead.