I push up and run. Lyla hobbles after me, stalking me through the maze of gravestones like a predator.
My breaths are hard and ragged as I stumble forward. My mind screams at me to run. Run faster, faster, faster. But I feel myself slowing, all the energy sapped out of me. I catch my breath against the side of a mausoleum—just one second—then I’m off again. But I’m clumsy now, my legs made of boneless gelatin. I trip, landing hard in overgrown grass. I haul myself up, only to fall again. I can’t get up.
Lyla’s disappeared. I crane my neck, wildly searching for her. A heavy silence has descended over the graveyard, the trees still in the hot, sticky air. Breaths wrench in and out of my lungs. Loud, too loud.
She leaps out from behind a tree. I shriek and have just enough time to roll behind a headstone before the shovel connects. The clang of metal against stone reverberates through the ground into my bones. Lyla stands above me, the shovel flashing in the pale light.
I haul up every last reserve of energy inside me, drag my knee to my chest, and shoot my leg out fast and hard.
I hear a crunch as it connects with her injured knee. Lyla howls and buckles, screams, “Youbitchyoubitchyoubitch.” I drag myself over the uneven ground, fingers numb and caked with dirt, and somehow stumble to my knees. I turn in a circle, my vision blurring at the edges, lumbering away from Lyla, but there’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The car is too far away. She’ll find me before then, and she has the keys.
Lyla screeches behind me, rocks in the dirt. I uselessly circle the graveyard. The plot I dug my way out of is somehow at my feet.
I worked so hard to get out, but now I’m climbing back into the hole, burying myself in the loose dirt, until just my nose and mouth stick out. She’ll find me. She isn’t stupid. But there’s nowhere else.
I hear her flash past, muttering, cursing. I’m so cold, so tired, my chest weighted with lead, but my pulse thrums every time she whizzes past.
Leaves swish under shoes. Twigs snap. She stops above me, pants for breath, and I can almost see her standing with her hands on her hips, surveying the graveyard. I don’t breathe. Can’t. The dirt weights my chest, and I take in tiny puffs of earthy air. It’s not enough.
She strides away then, metal dragging over dirt.
I don’t hear anything for a while. Minutes, then hours. I don’t know how much time passes, but it feels like forever.
And then I hear it. Another voice. A quiet whimper. Someone else is here.
I push up out of the ground. Dawn breaks over the graveyard, the sky awash with new-baby pink. A bent and wrinkled woman in a cream skirt suit kneels in front of a headstone ten feet away, a bushel of brightly colored flowers clutched in her hand. Her lips form an O when she sees me, as if she’s seeing a ghost.
I can’t be sure it isn’t true.
The final bit of tension leaves my body, and I sink to my knees.
A steady beeping sounds somewhere nearby. My temples ache, and there’s a fire-hot burning in my throat. I blink my eyes open. Harsh sunlight streams in through a window. I’m lying in a hospital bed. Wires are taped all over my chest, and there’s a tube in my throat.
The vitals monitor beeps faster as my heart rate speeds up.
Lyla. Oh my God, where’s Lyla?
There’s a rustling to my left, and then Mom’s at my side. Dad and Jenny hover behind her, their big eyes full of fear.
Dad?
“It’s okay, Hope,” Mom says, smoothing my hair. “We’re here. You can breathe. The machine is doing its job.”
I fumble for the tape that holds the tube in place, desperate to yank the thing out so I can talk, but Mom pulls my hands away and yells, “Nurse!”
A young nurse with a swishy blond ponytail runs into the room.
“She’s trying to pull her tube out,” Mom says.
I want to explain, but the damn tube makes speaking impossible.
The nurse sees Mom struggling to restrain me and disappears. She’s back a moment later, and she’s brought friends. An orderly takes over for Mom while the nurse injects something into the IV in my hand. Cool liquid rushes through my veins.
“We’re giving you something to help you relax,” a young woman in a white lab coat says.
The room gets fuzzy.
Ethan, I think.
And then everything goes black.
Dad, tucking my hair behind my ear. The ping ping ping of Jenny playing a game on her phone. Hushed voices. An overhead page. Squeaky wheels clattering down the hall. Plastic rustling. A cold bell pressed against my chest. A murmured “Good.” Eyes weighted with a thousand tons of lead, too drugged to open.
Falling, falling,
Falling.
When I wake up next, the tube is gone. Dad is gone too. Could be in the cafeteria getting a bite to eat, or could be halfway to New York and a new, skeezy moneymaking venture. I find I don’t actually care. Mom is here.