I hung up, and Leo was gone. The librarian was gone. The halls were silent and empty, except for the hum of the vending machines tucked into the corner. I slid a crisp dollar from my wallet, fed it to the machine. The gears churned, and in the emptiness, I started imagining all the things I could not see.
I felt myself taking note of the exits, an old habit: the front double doors through the lobby, the fire exits at the end of each hall, the windows off any classroom that had been left unlocked….
I shook the thought, grabbed the soda, and jogged out the double front doors, my steps echoing, my keys jangling in my purse. I kept jogging until I made it to the ring of light around my car in the nearly empty lot.
It was twilight, and there was a breeze kicking in through the mountains, and the shadows of the surrounding trees within the overhead lights looked a lot like the shadows of the black metal gates at home, when they were lit up in a thunderstorm.
I ran through the morning routine again, in reverse: check the backseat, start the engine, let it warm up. My phone in my bag, my bag beside me, nothing but gnats and mist caught in the headlights.
This was a good day. This was a normal day. A blur in a string of others, passing in typical fashion.
The reflectors on the double yellow line caught my headlights on the drive with a predictable regularity, almost hypnotic.
October came with a chill at night, and I wished I’d brought my coat. I leaned forward, turned the dial to hot, pressed the on button, and listened to the rush of air surging toward the vents as I leaned back in my seat.
—
A burst of heat.
A flash of light.
The world in motion.
—
I didn’t know the air could scream.
Don’t be afraid.
The voice sounded far away, like it had to travel through water, or glass, before it reached me. And then there was that static—a radio? White noise, crackling like electricity, singeing my nerves.
You’re okay.
Warm fingers at my neck, and the voice, getting sharper. My limbs were too heavy, like I’d fallen asleep with an arm and a leg hanging off the edge of my bed, and now everything tingled with pins and needles—sluggish and removed—as I tried to shift positions. My eyelids fluttered as I searched for the muted walls of my room.
“Can you hear me?” A voice that was not mine, not my mother’s, not Jan’s—but familiar nonetheless. A guy’s voice. Not my bedroom.
I opened my eyes, and nothing made sense—not the feeling of blood rushing in the wrong direction, or the lack of gravity where it should’ve been, or my dark hair, falling in a cascade across my face. Not the sound of my own breathing echoing inside my head, or the scent of burning rubber, or the dull thudding behind my eyelids, which I’d opted to close again.
But.
Don’t be afraid. You’re okay.
Okay.
“Hey, I’m going to get you out of here. Everything’s fine.”
Everything’s fine. I repeated it to myself, like my mother would do. But even as I let the words roll through my mind, like soft blankets tucked up to my chin, I felt the fear starting up, creeping slowly inside.
“Where am I?” I asked. There was a pressure in my head, a stiffness through my neck and shoulders, a subtle throbbing in my joints as my limbs were coming back to life.
“Thank God.” The voice was coming from behind me somewhere. Vaguely familiar. But before I could latch on to it, something mechanical and high-pitched started whirring in the distance. The static—sharper now, and clearer.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You’re okay. Don’t panic.”
Which meant that (a) I probably was not okay, and (b) I probably had reason to panic.
I attempted to twist around, but a strap cut across my lap and my chest, and metal pressed painfully up against my side, and when I attempted to push my hair out of my face, I could only see white billowing in front of my face, like a sheet. I was trapped.
Not okay.
Reason to panic.
Out. Get out.
I pushed against the metal for leverage as my breath started coming too fast.
The other person sucked in a breath, wrapped an arm around the seat to still me. “Also,” he said, “don’t move.”
His arm was shaking. I was shaking.
There were other voices now, farther away, and the humming of the equipment grew louder. “Coming down,” someone called.
“Okay,” the voice called back. And then to me, “Listen, you’re okay, you’ve been in an accident, but we’re going to get you out now. It’ll be a little loud is all.”
I was in an accident? The bend of the road and the reflectors in the double yellow line. Headlights, and I cut the wheel, and the sound of metal—
Oh God, how long had I been here? Had my mom tried to call? Was she panicking already, unable to reach me? I pushed my hair aside again, tucking it into my collar. I moved my arms around, feeling for my bag. Best I could tell, I was hanging—kind of diagonally and forward, and my purse had been on the seat beside me. So that would mean…
I reached my arms over my head, but the metal was too close, warped and bent, and I couldn’t feel any bag. “Really,” he said. “Don’t. Move.”
“I need my purse. I need my phone. I need to call my mom.” My breath hitched. He didn’t understand. I had to tell her I was okay. You’re okay.
“We’ll call her in a few minutes. But you need to keep still for now. What’s your name?”
“Kelsey,” I said.
A pause, and then, “Kelsey Thomas?”
“Yes.” Someone who knew me, then. Must be someone from school. Or the Lodge, or the neighborhood, maybe. I strained to look in the rearview mirror, which was closer to me than it should’ve been. The world appeared disjointed.
The mirror was cracked and askew—I could see branches, the rock making up the wall in the side of the mountain, but not my rescuer’s face. “Ryan,” he said, as if he understood I was grasping for something. “Baker,” he added.
“Ryan from my math class?” I asked, which was only one of the many things I could’ve said, but it was the first in my head, and the first out of my mouth.
A slow, steady breath. “Yeah. Ryan from your math class.”
I was surrounded by metal and white pillows, and I was presumably upside down, but I could wiggle my toes, and I could breathe, and I could think, and I was having a conversation with Ryan Baker from my math class, so I tallied off the things I was not: paralyzed; suffocating; unconscious; dead. My mother said it made her feel better to list the things she was—always starting with safe—but I preferred to carve out my safety with a process of elimination.
“The other car?” I asked.
He sucked in a breath. “Kelsey, I’m going to cut you out of your seat belt, but not until they remove the back panel. It’ll just take a minute.”
A minute. The air bags were in my face, and I felt the first pinprick of panic—that I would suffocate here, or that the car would explode between this moment and the next. I grasped for the reassurance of Ryan’s words—you’re okay—but it was too late. The thought had already planted itself in my head. An explosion. A fire. All the ways I could die, flipping through my mind in rapid succession.
“Cut me out now.”
“No, that’s not a good idea.”
Illogical fears, that’s what my mother’s therapist, Jan, would say. Not something that would actually happen. Remember the difference. I could move the air bags aside and I’d be fine. Ryan from my math class would cut my seat belt and I’d be out, and then I’d find my phone and call my mother and she’d list off the things that were okay before she got to the fact that I’d ruined the car.
I pressed down on the inflated air bags, pushing them lower, away from my face, to prove it to myself.
“Wait, Kelsey. Don’t.”
But his words were too late—I’d already gotten a glimpse of precisely what he didn’t want me seeing, and all the air drained from my body.
There was absolutely nothing fine about it.
The windshield was gone. And there was nothing below me. No pavement, no rocks, no grass or tilted view down the road. There was nothing. I was hanging toward air. Air and distant rock and fog—