Crash (13 page)

He nods. “I know, baby. And I lost sight of that. But then I got it back.” He swallows and I can tell this is hard for him.

I get up and offer him the Styrofoam cup. “We can talk about this later. We—”

“No.” He takes another sip of water and gestures me away. “Now. You're right. I was going to bars, every night.”

I look away, not sure I can keep my expression neutral.

“But not to drink. Well, that's not completely true. Some nights it was, but most nights it wasn't.”

I set the cup down and turn to him. “What do you mean?”

“I started out by going to that AA meeting. The one
you told me about. But it wasn't for me.” He holds up his hand before I can cut him off. “Some people say that if AA doesn't do it for you, if you say it isn't for you, then you're lying. To yourself. To everyone else. But just hear me out.

“I went. But I just couldn't talk there. Talking doesn't help me. It makes it worse. And hearing everyone else's sad story just makes me feel worse about my own. I went every day for a week. When I got home from those meetings, first thing I did was grab a beer. Or two. Or three. But I knew it had to stop. I had to make a choice. So I decided that I'd go to a bar every night until I could sit there and sip my soda water and not crave something harder.”

I shake my head, not seeing how that would work.

He sees my expression and makes a rueful sound. “First night, it was agony. I just wanted a drink. I left after six minutes. I know it was exactly six minutes because when I hit five minutes I forced myself to sit there for another sixty seconds. I watched the clock and as soon as the second hand cleared, I bolted.

“When I got home, first thing I did was open a beer. But I didn't drink it. I just sat there in the dark kitchen thinking about your mom and how sick she'd be to see me like this. Thinking about you, how I was letting you down. Letting myself down. Thinking about how much I wanted to drink that beer.

“I got it then. I really understood.” He holds my gaze, his voice steady as he says, “I'm an alcoholic and I could sit in a bar for a million hours, sip my soda water till I float
away, and I will never stop craving something harder. Sitting there in the dark in the kitchen, wanting that beer more than I wanted to breathe, it hit me that the trick was going to be to learn how to be stronger than that craving because it isn't going to go away. Not ever. I will never sit in a bar and not want a drink and I have to learn to live with that.”

I sink into the chair and take his hand, a tiny flicker of hope igniting inside me.

“I—” His voice cracks and he gives a pained cough, wincing as he touches his fingertips to his ribs. I lean forward and hand him the water, waiting while he takes a couple of sips. With a nod he hands it back to me and I set the cup on the table.

“I kept going back over the next few weeks,” he says. “Different bars. But I liked the Elk. Not too crowded. Not too empty. No one gave me grief about just wanting soda.

“I worked my way up to three hours. Three hours, drinking nothing but soda water with lime, the booze all around me calling my name.”

He looks down and smoothes his fingertips along the thin blue sheet stamped with the hospital logo. Then he looks up at me. “In the first weeks, I slipped a couple of times, Miki. Had a drink. But I never had more than one because of that promise I made you, the one about not driving if I drink. The thing is, it should have been me getting that promise out of you. It should have been me being the parent.”

I lean over and rest my forehead on the back of his hand. We sit there like that for a long time, neither of us saying anything else.

Finally, I whisper, “I thought it was your fault. I thought you were drinking that night. I thought you almost killed yourself and Carly. I'm sorry.”

I raise my head and look at him. His eyes are closed, his breathing slow and even. I don't know if he was awake to hear what I said. I don't know if I'll ever have the guts to say it to him again.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

JACKSON SHOWS UP AFTER SCHOOL. HE BRINGS ME A PACKAGE of work each of my teachers put together for me and a huge, handmade card for Dad signed by pretty much the whole school.

“The brainchild of Kelley and Dee,” he says. “They said they'll be by later with the card for Carly.”

If they were here in front of me right now, I think I'd cry. I stand the card where Dad'll see it when he wakes up.

“Did you see her?” I ask.

“Carly? Yeah. I stopped there for a couple of minutes on my way up. You?”

I nod. “I sat with her while her parents went to grab something to eat.”

Neither of us says the obvious out loud. That Carly's status hasn't changed.

“There's another girl in the ICU. Kristin Beck. She was in a car accident, too. She hasn't woken up yet, either.” I remind myself of my resolution to wear my optimist panties. Focus on the positive. “Dr. Lee was here. He said they're going to move Dad to the regular floor.”

“Whennnnnnn?” The word stretches like pulled taffy. Jackson asks me something else, but it's just a jumble of nonsensical sounds.

The room around me explodes into a kaleidoscope of color and shape.

“Jackson!” I reach for his hand, our fingers connecting. “They can't do this. Not now. It's too much. I can't!” The world snaps back into focus.

I'm breathing too fast, the sounds jagged and panicked. Jackson wraps his arms around me.

“I can't,” I say again. “I can't do another mission. Not now. What you said outside Carly's house, about buildings that sway when an earthquake hits and buildings that snap because they're too rigid? About me getting to choose what sort of building I'm going to be? I'm trying to sway, Jackson. I swear I am. But I'm breaking. I can't—”

“You bend, Miki. You do not break. I will not let you break.”

“What makes you think you get a choice?” I whisper, and only when they're out there, hanging in the silence, do I realize the words echo one of Jackson's standard phrases.

The moment stretches like an elastic band then snaps back into place.

Jackson's lips move. I know he's answering me, but I can't hear the words. My ears ring. My vision spangles with flares of color.

“Jackson?”

“I'm here, Miki.”

But he isn't. He's fading, the sound of his voice far, far away.

“I've got you,” he says. “And you've got me. We've got each other, Miki. Don't forget it.”

But we don't have each other.

We reach, stretch, trying to hold the failing connection.

The floor drops. And drops. And drops. I try to cling to Jackson's hand, but it's gone, he's gone, and I'm alone, spinning out of control.

I fall, hitting cold ground in a sprawl. The impact jolts through my thigh and one side of my butt, but my hands, my feet . . . I can't feel them at all. It's like an injection of novocaine before I get a filling, except this injection has numbed my limbs.

Resentment fills me as I force myself to my feet and stand at the bottom of the amphitheater in this place that exists but doesn't, this place where infinite years of alien consciousness unite.

Tiers upon tiers of seats rise all around me, filled by shadowy, wraithlike shapes. Before me is a floating
platform occupied by three cloaked figures. The Committee. The first time they brought me here, they appeared as a Cleopatra look-alike, a brawny guy modeled on a combo of Odin and Thor, and a cowled grim reaper. But they don't actually look like that; they showed me something I expected to see. They don't plant the images; they just let the viewer play out their own mental video. It wasn't real.

So is any of this real, or is it a construct in my thoughts? Is there really an amphitheater and a floating platform, or is the Committee still just letting me conjure up something I expect to see?

Truth is, it doesn't matter. What matters right now are Dad and Carly and me getting back to the hospital. That's what matters to me.

But I'm sure the Committee has its own, very different opinion on that.

Forcing my voice to stay low and steady, I ask, “Is a mission imminent?”

“No.” Their reply dances across my nerve endings like an elephant in army boots. With metal cleats.

I'm not surprised by their answer. If they'd pulled me for a mission, I would have respawned in the lobby and Jackson would be with me.

“We wish to converse.”

“Converse,” I echo. “As in, have a conversation.” Anger surges. I get why we're pulled on missions to fight the Drau without warning, any time, night or day, without consideration for the pressures of our other lives: friends, school,
family. People we love at the edge of death.

The Committee doesn't get to pick when the Drau invade. So we don't get to pick when we're pulled. The enemy comes. We fight them off, small battles in the grand war for the continued existence of mankind.

So, yeah, I get that we aren't in control. And I've come to accept it even though it sucks.

What I don't get, what I don't accept, is the Committee pulling me for a little meet and greet when they know what's going on in my real world life. My resentment crackles and sparks, my skin tingling.

There's no sense asking them to send me back. They work from their own twisted agenda. Instead, I go on the offensive and say, “So let's converse. You answer my questions and I'll answer yours.” I don't give them a chance to decline my offer. “What happened? How did the Drau end up at my high school during the Halloween dance? How did Carly end up in the game?”

“The Drau altered expectations. They were not to be at your high school at all. They were expected in a different place.”

I remember how my team originally respawned in a different high school, then somehow ended up at Glenbrook, so the Committee's assertion that the Drau were supposed to be somewhere else makes sense, but it doesn't really explain anything.

“We believe the Drau chose to threaten you by arriving in your alternate reality.”

I have to choke back a sarcastic laugh at that. My alternate reality? As if the game is my real life?

“Wait . . . how does that make sense? Are you saying that the Drau just targeted me and my team? That they targeted my high school because of me? Or that they attacked every team out there on their home turf?” That's a terrible possibility. The Drau crashing through the boundaries between dimensions in a single place is horrific enough; the thought that they did it in multiple locations as a concentrated attack is beyond terrifying.

I wait for their answer, but it doesn't come.

Electric shocks erupt on my scalp, my palms, my soles, then reach for my wrists, my ankles as the silence stretches to infinity.

The sparking on my skin morphs into painful prickling. My vision flickers and vibrates. Blue rectangles over green over yellow in ragged patterns.

I blink and the world freezes, shadowy figures locked in place.

I blink and the world moves too fast, the amphitheater going round and round like a crazy carousel.

I blink and I'm in a blinding white room. The air smells artificial, like it's recycled and laced with air freshener. A dark rectangle appears, marking a doorway, one I've passed through before. I stumble through now and find the same curved hallway I saw last time I was here.

I start along the corridor but I don't get far. A girl with honey-gold hair rounds the curve and throws herself at me,
enveloping me in a tight hug. Lizzie.

“Miki, I'm so sorry about your dad and Carly.”

I'm startled enough that I hug her back. Or maybe I hug her because I remember the way she's saved my life more than once, and because her tone, her expression, they seem so sincere. “How do you know? About them? About the accident?”

She steps back and looks me over. “Are you okay?”

“Physically? I'm fine. Mentally? Not so much.” I pause. “How do you know about the accident?” I ask again.

“I try and keep tabs on you. It isn't always easy.”

“Keep tabs . . . Is that a euphemism for spying on me?”

She studies me for a second and then says, “You could say that.”

Give the girl points for honesty.

“We don't have much time, Miki. We can't hold you here for long.”

A million questions dance through my mind.
Where is here? What do you want? Who are you really? How did you manage to bring me here? Who is the “we” you're talking about? I only see you. I've only ever seen you.

Before I can decide which question to ask, Lizzie says, “You need to learn how to keep them out. The Committee. They know. Do you understand? They
know.
And that's dangerous.”

“Know what?”