I’d never made her any promises, so there was nothing to be broken, but still it felt like a breach of contract, all the things we’d never get to do together flooding into my brain.
We’d known each other for years, and I just assumed we’d have time for all that stupid crap, like sitting around a campfire, eating s’mores, and listening to some guy playing acoustic guitar. The things you do on a beach, the easy way you wrap your arms around someone and hold them tight in the firelight and know that even if you don’t have forever, you have this moment.
But that was always the problem with Pixie, wasn’t it? We were too close. A moment wouldn’t be enough.
And now it looked as though I wouldn’t even get that.
Dad had told me to look away. My bad eye was still killing me from my fracas with Todd Wishlow, who thought Pix was worth only a moment.
Pixie was worth much more than that, even though I hadn’t realized it until right then, when she was leaving me. She wasn’t just a weekend friend. I’d known her for six years, and when you’ve known someone for that long and you start to think about them romantically, it automatically gets serious. And no matter how many lectures Dad gave me about getting serious too young, that was what I wanted.
I wanted the beach bonfires and someone with a guitar playing “Kum Ba Yah” and to wrap myself around her in a blanket and have her lean against me in the firelight. Rides on the Seattle Great Wheel, walking down the street with my arm around her waist, all of that.
Too late.
Dad seemed to understand and dug my hand tight into his. The most he could do was stand with me as I watched Pixie’s senseless death, but he was there for me in this moment when there were all other kinds of things that needed his attention.
I loved him for it. “Clear!”
Whir-kerpow!
No change in Frank.
“I would roll this back for you if I could, Henry,” Dad said.
The man holding the paddles over Frank rocked back onto his heels, smeared the rain on his face, and looked at his stopwatch. After a few moments, he gently closed Frank’s eyes.
At the same time, whatever had worked its way through Pixie’s bloodstream had gotten to where it needed to go, and she jackknifed up, and with a wheeze and a gulp she screamed and didn’t stop.
Frank breathed, but he did not scream. He rolled over onto his side and started to shake. “Whoa,” he said. “What happened?”
Pixie wouldn’t stop screaming. Her scream was so awful it was as though she were being eaten alive. I shot away from Dad and crouched down on the beach next to her.
“Shh . . . easy, Pix. Easy. I’m here. You’re all right.”
“Oh my God,” she said, and she bawled, her face more inflated than mine. Her eyes were still swollen shut. Both of them. She reached out blindly for anything.
I grabbed her arm and dragged her to me. “I’m here.”
“I’m not ready,” she said. “Please tell her I’m not ready.”
“Shh . . .”
I rocked her.
She gulped air. “It’s too much,” she said, and gulped some more.
One of the first responders tried to pull me away. “It’s okay, sir. I’m going to ask you to let us do our job now.”
I told Pix once again that everything was going to be all right, but she kept crying, saying she “wasn’t ready,” until someone put something in her drip that calmed her down.
As they carried Pixie away on a backboard, Frank got unsteadily to his feet and said, “Whoa! That was freaky!” and the medics laughed. They didn’t try very hard to carry him away as well, even though he’d been just as dead as his sister was. He was a Gray, I guess. Since he was up and acting alert, they assumed he could take it.
But I wasn’t convinced that he was okay and that he didn’t need to be seen by a doctor.
I wanted to know more.
Pixie and Frank dropped at exactly the same time.
I wanted to know if Dean, Sammy, and Lawford had dropped, too.
That question would have to wait.
“Son,” Dad said. I’d forgotten he was there. “You can let Pixie go now.”
I couldn’t stop staring at Frank joking with the medics about blacking out and how, if Sammy ever found out about it, he’d never hear the end of jabs about fainting couches and smelling salts.
Who were these giants? Why did they play by different rules than the rest of us?
“Henry,” Dad tried again. “Come away now. Pixie’s got good people looking after her. Her long night is over. Ours is just beginning.”
I turned around reluctantly. Farther up the beach at our house, a different kind of crew was walking to and from a prone form in the sand, slowly and methodically. Meredith had retreated to the patio and out of the rain.
Now that the emergency with the Grays was over, Lyudmila’s death seemed to have hit my sister hard. Someone had thrown a scratchy blanket over her shoulder, and she alternately clutched it and blew her nose into it.