She had slipped onto the bus before I could catch up to her, the doors hissing shut when I was still a half block away, shouting. Maybe she heard me, maybe she didn’t. Her face was white, her shirt dark with rain; standing under the fluorescent lights, she looked like a photo negative, color in all the wrong places. Then the bus slid away beyond the trees, as if the night had opened its jaw to swallow it.
It took me twenty minutes to catch up to the bus on Route 101 in my car, and another twenty before I saw her get off, walking head down on the shoulder, arms crossed against the rain, past blinking-light businesses advertising Bud Light or tripleX videos.
Where was she going? To Beamer’s to see Andre? Down to Orphan’s Beach and the lighthouse? Or did she just want to get far away, get lost in the rocky beaches of East Norwalk, where the land ran into the angry sea?
I tailed her for another half mile, flashing my headlights, blowing my horn, before she agreed to get in.
“Drive,” she said.
“Dara, listen. What you saw—”
“I said, drive.” But when I started to angle the wheel around, to turn back toward home, she reached out and jerked the wheel in the other direction. I slammed on the brakes. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink. She didn’t seem angry or upset. She just sat there, dripping water onto the upholstery, staring straight ahead. “That way,” she said, and pointed south—in the direction of nowhere-land.
But I did what she told me. I just wanted the chance to explain. The road was bad; the tires skidded a little when I accelerated, and I slowed down again. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t think of a single excuse to give.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “It wasn’t . . . I mean, it’s not what it looked like.”
She said nothing. The wipers were doing overtime, and still I could barely see the road, hardly see the headlights cutting the rain into splinters.
“We didn’t mean to. We were just talking. We were talking about you, actually. I don’t even like him.” A lie—one of the biggest lies I’d ever told her.
“This isn’t about Parker,” she said, practically the first words she’d spoken since she got in the car.
“What do you mean?” I wanted to look at her but was afraid to take my eyes off the road. I didn’t even know where we were going—I recognized, vaguely, the 7-Eleven where we’d stopped the summer before to get beer on the way to Orphan’s Beach.
“This is about you and me.” Dara’s voice was low and cold. “You can’t let me have anything of my own, can you? You always have to be better than me. You always have to win.”
“What?” I was so stunned I couldn’t even argue.
“Don’t play innocent. I get it. That’s another part of your big act. Perfect Nick and her fuckup sister.” She was speaking so fast, I could hardly understand her; it occurred to me she might be on something. “So fine. You want Parker? You can have him. I don’t need him. I don’t need you, either. Pull over.”
It took me a second to process her request; by the time I did, she had already started to open the door, even though the car was still moving.
And with a sudden, desperate clarity I knew I couldn’t let her out: if I did, I’d lose her.
“Shut the door.” I jammed my foot on the accelerator, and she jerked backward in her seat. Now we were going too fast—she couldn’t jump. “Shut the door.”
“Pull over.”
Faster, faster, even though I could hardly see; even though the rain was heavy as a curtain, loud as applause cresting at the end of a play. “No. Not until we finish talking.”
“We are finished talking. For good.”
“Dara, please. You don’t understand.”
“I said, pull over.” She reached over and jerked the wheel toward the shoulder. The back of the car spun out into the opposite lane. I slammed on the brakes, spun the wheel to the left, tried to correct.
It was too late.
We were spinning across the lanes. We’re going to die, I thought, and then we hit the guardrail, burst through it in an explosion of glass and metal. Smoke was pouring from the engine, and for one split second we were suspended, airborne, safe, and somehow my hand found Dara’s in the dark.
I remember it was very cold.
I remember that she didn’t scream, or say anything, or make a sound.
And then I don’t remember anything at all.