it happened, Skylar might be alive now.
I sit there on the floor with the dog, just feeling myself breathe and burn, for what must be something like ten minutes before I think I hear a car pull into the drive. The noise plugs me back into reality and gets me standing. My mom keeps a bottle of Advil on the shelf over the fridge. I reach for it, pour two capsules onto the counter and then toss them into my mouth, chasing them down with a swig of fruit juice from the fridge.
Nobody comes through the front door. The car must’ve passed.
I set the leftover linguini on the floor for Moose. Way too much gar [ to.
“I know,” I tell him. “It sucks.”
I lob the linguini into the trash and go upstairs to do something with the burn. The red spans from my wrist down to my knuckles. I should’ve thought that over beforehand. If you’re going to fuck yourself up and want to keep it a secret I guess you better know how to hide it.
I dig out the first-aid kit from under the sink and pull out a gauze pad and antibiotic ointment. Squeezing the ointment onto my skin stings so bad that my molars bite down on my tongue. I lay the gauze pad gently on top of my left hand and that hurts too. Then I wrap a bandage around the pad, finishing it off with a ton of tape to keep the bandage in place.
My shitty bandaging job probably makes the injury look worse than it is. I’m already beginning to regret what I did to myself. Nothing’s changed except now my singed skin won’t quit screaming at me and I’ve turned into one of those screwed-up people who hurt themselves.
Just once, I tell myself. It could’ve as easily been an accident. You won’t do it again. And then I realize, for the thousandth time, that my sister’s dead and it doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do because nothing will ever change that.
I hear my cell ringing from my bedroom as I’m putting the first-aid kit back. I don’t want to answer it but that’s life, doing thing after thing that doesn’t matter and won’t change anything. My feet start moving in the direction of my room and next thing I know I have the phone in my hand and am answering it.
“Hey, it’s Ty,” the voice on the other end of the phone says. “Jules said she was over there this morning and that things were pretty quiet. I was wondering if you wanted to get out for a while, or something.… ” Ty’s voice trails off. He sounds kind of like the first time he came to visit me after my bike accident a year and a half ago, as though he’s not sure what to say because he doesn’t know whether I’m going to be okay.
But that accident was a walk in the park compared to this. A car rear-ended me when I was riding home from Ty’s, throwing me off my bike. I never saw who did it—he or she didn’t stick around to see if I was breathing. My dad still starts tremoring like a volcano about to blow when the hit-and-run comes up. “What kind of person can knock a kid off his bike and then speed off without calling for help!” he rants. “I can’t believe this sicko’s still driving around.”
It was a fifty-something-year-old woman on a Vespa who found me and called for an ambulance. I’d fractured my C1 vertebra and spent thirteen weeks in a Miami J cervical collar. No more contact sports for me. The doctor even nixed things like snowboarding and mountain biking. The downside was my parents forced me to give up soccer without even getting a second opinion, the upside is that their fear I’d get hit on my bike again convinced them that buying me a car would be worth the dent in their bank account. They gave me a barely used secondhand Hyundai just two days after I go [ys t bt my full license a few months ago.
“You can’t put a price on safety,” I overheard my father say to my mom one night, but it turns out lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same way. I never used to believe in fate but now my head keeps tripping back to the idea that maybe it was supposed to be me
I sit there on the floor with the dog, just feeling myself breathe and burn, for what must be something like ten minutes before I think I hear a car pull into the drive. The noise plugs me back into reality and gets me standing. My mom keeps a bottle of Advil on the shelf over the fridge. I reach for it, pour two capsules onto the counter and then toss them into my mouth, chasing them down with a swig of fruit juice from the fridge.
Nobody comes through the front door. The car must’ve passed.
I set the leftover linguini on the floor for Moose. Way too much gar [ to.
“I know,” I tell him. “It sucks.”
I lob the linguini into the trash and go upstairs to do something with the burn. The red spans from my wrist down to my knuckles. I should’ve thought that over beforehand. If you’re going to fuck yourself up and want to keep it a secret I guess you better know how to hide it.
I dig out the first-aid kit from under the sink and pull out a gauze pad and antibiotic ointment. Squeezing the ointment onto my skin stings so bad that my molars bite down on my tongue. I lay the gauze pad gently on top of my left hand and that hurts too. Then I wrap a bandage around the pad, finishing it off with a ton of tape to keep the bandage in place.
My shitty bandaging job probably makes the injury look worse than it is. I’m already beginning to regret what I did to myself. Nothing’s changed except now my singed skin won’t quit screaming at me and I’ve turned into one of those screwed-up people who hurt themselves.
Just once, I tell myself. It could’ve as easily been an accident. You won’t do it again. And then I realize, for the thousandth time, that my sister’s dead and it doesn’t matter what I do or don’t do because nothing will ever change that.
I hear my cell ringing from my bedroom as I’m putting the first-aid kit back. I don’t want to answer it but that’s life, doing thing after thing that doesn’t matter and won’t change anything. My feet start moving in the direction of my room and next thing I know I have the phone in my hand and am answering it.
“Hey, it’s Ty,” the voice on the other end of the phone says. “Jules said she was over there this morning and that things were pretty quiet. I was wondering if you wanted to get out for a while, or something.… ” Ty’s voice trails off. He sounds kind of like the first time he came to visit me after my bike accident a year and a half ago, as though he’s not sure what to say because he doesn’t know whether I’m going to be okay.
But that accident was a walk in the park compared to this. A car rear-ended me when I was riding home from Ty’s, throwing me off my bike. I never saw who did it—he or she didn’t stick around to see if I was breathing. My dad still starts tremoring like a volcano about to blow when the hit-and-run comes up. “What kind of person can knock a kid off his bike and then speed off without calling for help!” he rants. “I can’t believe this sicko’s still driving around.”
It was a fifty-something-year-old woman on a Vespa who found me and called for an ambulance. I’d fractured my C1 vertebra and spent thirteen weeks in a Miami J cervical collar. No more contact sports for me. The doctor even nixed things like snowboarding and mountain biking. The downside was my parents forced me to give up soccer without even getting a second opinion, the upside is that their fear I’d get hit on my bike again convinced them that buying me a car would be worth the dent in their bank account. They gave me a barely used secondhand Hyundai just two days after I go [ys t bt my full license a few months ago.
“You can’t put a price on safety,” I overheard my father say to my mom one night, but it turns out lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same way. I never used to believe in fate but now my head keeps tripping back to the idea that maybe it was supposed to be me
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