“911, what is your emergency?”
“I’m at 1452 Brooklyn Terrace Drive. My friend—he fell off his bike and he hit his head, and he’s hurt really badly.” She hurried back outside. “There’s a lot of blood.”
“Okay, ma’am. Please stay calm. We’re sending an ambulance now, okay?”
“Okay.” Kinley pressed her hand to her chest. “What do I do?”
“Is the young man breathing?”
“I think so.” Kinley peered over Mattie. His chest was rising and falling. “Yes. Yes, he’s breathing. But he’s white—like, really white. He looks dead.”
“It’s good that he’s breathing. Now stay with him, okay? Do not move him. If he has injured his spinal column, it could cause more damage.”
“What about the bleeding?” Kinley fought to keep her voice calm. “Should I stop the bleeding?”
“Can you do it without moving his head?”
“Maybe. Tyler, we need to try to stop the bleeding without moving his head.”
“Yeah.” Tyler nodded. He pulled off his shirt and pressed it to Mattie’s head. “Shit. It’s too much blood. How long until they’re going to be here, Kinley? They need to get here. Now.”
“How much longer? Do we need to keep him warm? What more should we do?”
“Ma’am, can you take a deep breath for me, please?”
Kinley sucked in air through her mouth. “Yeah,” she said, breathing out hard. “Yeah.”
“Someone should be there in minutes, okay?”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Sure. Okay.”
“I am going to ask that you keep watching his chest, okay? When people are unconscious, they can’t clear their throats, so their airways can get blocked. That means it’s your job to make sure he continues to breathe, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Kinley knelt down beside Tyler on the sidewalk and watched Mattie’s chest. It moved slowly, but he was still breathing.
In the distance, she could hear sirens.
“Now, I’m going to stay on the phone with you until paramedics arrive. Okay, sweetheart?”
“Thank you,” Kinley said. She put her hand on her chest. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“He’s bleeding through the shirt!” Tyler yelled. There was blood all over his hands. His wrists. There was a smear of it across his forehead.
“Hang on, Mattie,” Kinley whispered. “Please, hang on.”
And then, the ambulance was there. It came screaming up to the sidewalk, and two EMTs leaped out. Kinley stood back, and Tyler held her tight to his chest while the paramedics carefully moved Mattie onto a stretcher and buckled him in.
“What—what just happened?” Kinley whispered.
“I don’t know,” Tyler whispered. “I just looked out—and there he was.” He looked at Kinley “Did you hear anything?”
Kinley shook her head. “You don’t think . . . maybe—someone—”
“No.” Tyler cut her off. “He probably just hit a . . . a rock or something. And his tire skidded.”
The EMTs moved Mattie into the back of the ambulance. “Where are you taking him?” Tyler asked.
“Saint Mary’s East,” one EMT said.
“Is he going to be all right?” Kinley asked, but the EMT ignored her.
Neighbors up and down the street were peering out of their windows. Mr. and Mrs. Richardson were actually standing by their mailbox, pointing and whispering. Kinley wanted to scream at them. How long had they been there? Why hadn’t they helped?
She looked down at the sidewalk, at the wide pool of blood and Tyler’s yellow T-shirt, stained crimson, at the edge of the puddle.
She was the reason Mattie had gotten hurt. If he hadn’t been on the way to her house, he would have never fallen off his bike. She clutched harder at Tyler. “This is my fault,” she whispered.
“And mine.” He hesitated and looked down at her. She noticed, of all things to notice in that moment, his eyelashes. They were full and thick, and resting on the edge of the left one was a single tear. “Was this a bad plan, Kin?”
She shook her head as a car pulled up. Ivy. “No. We still need to do it.”
Ivy climbed out of the car, her eyes wide. “Wh—what happened? What happened?”
The female EMT poked her head out of the back of the ambulance. “Are you coming or not?”
Kinley looked at Ivy. “Follow us, okay?”
Tyler and Kinley climbed into the back of the ambulance and found seats beside the stretcher, just out of the way of the EMTs, who were punching buttons on machines. One fixed a blood pressure cuff to Mattie’s arm; the other turned to him and fit a breathing bag and mask on his face, which she pumped steadily.
Tyler found Kinley’s hand and squeezed it, but it did nothing to comfort her. She looked up, into his eyes, and saw what was reflected in hers.
Everything was going wrong.
They’d invited Mattie—along with Cade and Ivy—over for one reason: to talk things over.
In other words, to get a recorded confession. From someone. Anyone who wasn’t them.