Penpal (20 page)

As we walked down the final side of the mall, back toward the theatre, I asked her about Josh. I had asked about him when I saw her in the theatre with her friends weeks before, but she had simply brushed it aside, and I let her because I would have talked to her about anything. This time when I asked, she told me that she didn’t want to talk about it. I asked her if he was at least doing okay, and she just said, “I don’t know.” I figured Josh must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started getting into trouble. I felt bad. I felt guilty.

As we approached the parking lot, I noticed that the car with the cracked back window was gone and that her car was now the only one in the parking lot. I had no idea how long it took to clean up that theatre before it closed, but as consistently dirty as that place was, I wasn’t surprised that the employees had already left. Veronica asked me if I needed her to drive me back to Chris’ house, and even though I really didn’t need her to, I wanted her to, so I lied and said that it was a long walk and that I’d appreciate it.

I had finished my soda during the movie, and all the walking was putting pressure on my bladder. I knew that I could wait until I was back at Chris’, but I had decided that I was going to try to kiss her when she dropped me off, and I didn’t want this biological nagging to rush me out of the car. This would be
my first kiss.

I struggled, but I could think of no ruse to conceal what I needed to do. The theatre had closed, so I only had one option. I told her that I was going to go behind the theatre to piss but that I’d be back in “two shakes.” It was obvious that I thought it was hilarious, but she seemed to laugh more at how funny I found it than at how funny it clearly was.

On the way toward the theatre, I stopped and turned toward her. I told her that I had a weird question, and her interest piqued. I asked her if Josh had ever told her that some kid named Alex had done something nice for me. She paused to think for a moment and said that he had; she enquired as to why I had asked, but I said it was nothing. Josh really was a good friend.

When I went to go behind the theatre, I realized that there was a chain-link fence extending off of and running parallel to the walls of the building. She could still see me where I was standing, and the fence seemed to stretch on endlessly, so I thought I’d just hop it, duck out of sight, and return as quickly as I could. It may have been too much of an effort, but I thought it polite. I climbed the fence and walked just a little ways until I was out of sight. I heard Veronica yell for me to not stand on any grates or the mall-monster might get me.

For a moment, the only sounds were the crickets in the grass behind me and the collision of liquid and cement. Before too long, however, these sounds were overpowered by a noise that I can still hear when it is quiet and there are no other noises to distract my ears.

In the distance, I heard a faint but distinct screeching, which quickly subsided, only to be replaced with a cascade of thundering vibrations. I realized quickly enough what it was.

It was a car.

The growling of the engine got louder. And then I thought.

No. Not louder. Closer.

The rumblings intensified. It was growing louder still. I started back toward the fence with haste, but before I could get very far at all, I heard a brief, truncated scream, and the roar of the engine terminated in a deafening thud. I started running, but after only two or three steps, I was tripped by a loose piece of stone, and I fell hard and fast onto the concrete – my head striking the corner of a bench as I fell.

I was dazed for maybe thirty seconds, but the renewed
rumbling
of the engine drew my senses back, and my equilibrium was restored by my adrenaline. I redoubled my efforts. I was worried that whoever had crashed the car might harass Veronica. Briefly, but forcefully, it occurred to me that we would have to call the police. My mom would be
contacted because
I was a minor – that wasn’t how I wanted this
night to end.

As I was climbing over the fence, I saw that there was still only her car in the parking lot. I didn’t see any evidence of a crash. I thought that I might have misjudged its direction or proximity, but I swore I could smell the faint and fleeting aroma of burned rubber or possibly machine smoke, and this was corroborated by a metallic taste that clung to my tongue. Each of my senses was telling me that something had happened, but my eyes defiantly returned ordinary images.

As I ran toward Veronica’s yellow car, I had to change my orientation to move around it. Finally, and terribly, my eyes joined my other alerted senses. I saw what the car had hit, and my legs stopped working almost completely.

It was Veronica.

Her car was sitting between us, and as I closed the distance and walked around it, she came fully into view.

Veronica’s body lay twisted and crumpled on the black asphalt of the parking lot, her limbs so unnaturally contorted that she looked like a child’s discarded wooden art doll that now showcased a catalog of things the human body cannot do. As I looked at her, I actually found it hard to discern whether she was lying on her back or her stomach, and my vision warped the space around her in an attempt to see a human figure again. This optical illusion made me feel sick with dizziness to the point that I had to close my eyes for a moment for fear of vomiting.

“Veronica?” I pleaded with limp, vibration-less vocal cords – the sound nothing more than the broken whisper of a ghost.

The bone of her right shin had cut savagely through her jeans and stood erect atop a foundation of bloodstained denim. Her other leg bent out to the side twice – as if she had a second joint in her femur. I traced her figure and saw that her left arm had been dislocated at the shoulder and was wrapped so hard and forcefully around the back of her neck that her hand fell over her right breast with her fingertips nearly touching
her navel.

I stepped a little closer and knelt down, gravity doing the lion’s share of the work as my legs trembled.

Her head was craned back and her mouth hung widely open toward the sky, and as I looked into her half-lidded eyes, they stared absently back into mine, as lifeless and cold as a shark’s. Blood was pooling around my shoe now. There was so much of it.

When you are confronted with something in the world that simply doesn’t belong, your mind tries to convince itself that it is dreaming, and to that end it provides you with that distinct sense of all things moving slowly, as if through sap. In that moment, I honestly felt that I would wake up any minute.

But I didn’t wake up.

I fumbled with my phone to call for help, but I had no signal. I was depressing the power button in the hopes that the signal would return when the phone was turned back on, when I saw Veronica’s phone sticking out of what I thought was her front right pocket. I had no choice. Trembling, I reached for her phone and took hold of it. As I slid it out, she moved and gasped so violently for air that it seemed as if she was trying to breathe in the whole world.

This startled me so much that I staggered back and fell onto the asphalt with her phone in my hand. She was trying to adjust her body to get it into its natural position, but with every spasm and jerk of her body, I could hear the cracking and grinding of her bones. Without thinking, I scrambled over to her and put my face over hers and pleaded,

“Veronica, don’t move. Don’t move, okay? Just stay still. Don’t move. Veronica, please just don’t move.”

I kept saying it, but the words started to fall apart as tears came streaming down my face. I opened her phone. It still worked. It was still on the screen where she had saved my number, and when I saw that, I felt my heart break a little. I called 911 and waited with her, telling her that she would be okay, and feeling guilty for lying to her every time I said it.

When the sound of sirens tore through the air, she seemed to become more alert. She had remained conscious
since first coming to, but now more of the light was coming back into her eyes. She was breathing steadily, but it was a gurgling, labored breathing. Her brain was still protecting
her from pain, though it looked as if it was finally allowing
her to become aware that something was terribly wrong with her. Her eyes rolled over to mine, and her lips moved. She was
struggling,
but I heard her.

“Hhh
…
he
…
p
… pi … picture. M
…
my pictu
…
he
took it.”

I didn’t understand what she meant, so I said the only thing I could. “I’m so sorry, Veronica.”

I rode with her in the ambulance where she finally, and mercifully, lost consciousness. The paramedics asked me several times what happened, but I could only mumble the word “car.” I was staring so vacantly that one of the paramedics shined a light in my eyes in an attempt to determine if I had been injured as well. When he returned his attention to Veronica, I felt guilty that he had even had to waste his time on me.

When we arrived at the hospital, the nurses wheeled Veronica through a set of double-doors. As the paramedics rushed by me, one of them put Veronica’s purse in my lap; I fidgeted with the leather strap and sat anxiously yet absently in the waiting room. The blank stare had returned to my eyes as my mind swam in every direction with no guidance or trajectory. The shouts, coughs, cries, and talking of the emergency room waiting area became a dull buzzing in my ear as I went completely numb to all things. All things but one.

A phone was vibrating in my pocket.

My pulse quickened and my throat dried as I reached my hand into my pants pocket to fish out the phone. My mother was trying to check in on me again. I had no idea how I was going to explain this to her. I wasn’t worried about getting in trouble – those consequences seemed so remote and insignificant to everything now – but what combination of words could I possibly cobble together to explain all this? Between
vibrations, I clasped my hand around my phone and pulled
it out.

It was off.

For just a moment, I thought the call had simply stopped, or perhaps my phone had died just then somehow. But this moment of confusion ended as soon as the vibrations began again – still in my pocket. I still had Veronica’s phone, and someone was calling it. I felt my eyes begin to water, and I reached into my pocket to retrieve Veronica’s phone. I looked at the screen and could see that her dad was calling her. I needed to answer it. I needed to tell him what had happened. Veronica’s mom was a nurse; maybe she could help. I needed to let someone know what was going on. But every time I tried to imagine even a fragment of what I might say, my thoughts would splinter into pieces too small to reassemble.

I kept hoping the phone would just stop ringing – that the insistence that I answer it would be over. But I knew from what Veronica had told me earlier that as long as her dad kept his phone to his ear, her phone would never stop ringing. With a burning in my chest, I moved my thumb over the phone and pressed “Ignore.” Relief, guilt, and shame boiled within me, and I collapsed my head onto my knees and cried.

Collecting myself, I went to the counter to see if there was any information on Veronica’s condition, but not enough time had passed for there to be any news that would be good news. Before leaving the counter, I asked if I could make a call. I dialed my mom’s number into the hospital phone. Looking at the clock on the wall, I saw that it was about 4:00 A.M., and I held my breath as the line sought a connection. She answered. I told her that I was fine, but that Veronica was not. She cursed at me and said she’d be right there, but I told her I wasn’t leaving until Veronica was out of surgery. She said she’d come anyway.

The police entered the hospital just a little after I hung up the phone with my mother. They didn’t have many questions for me, and the ones that they did have weren’t met with very helpful answers. I hadn’t seen the driver. I didn’t get the license plate. I could only tell them that I thought that it was a brown car, but I couldn’t even tell them how many doors were on it. As the police officers were walking away, I yelled to them, and they walked back over to where I was sitting. I told them that the car I was talking about had a big crack in the back window. Sensing how impotent I was feeling, one of the officers said that would be a huge help. “Don’t worry. We’ll
find him.”

My mom and I didn’t speak that much when she got to the hospital. After verifying that I was unharmed, her relief transitioned into anger. I told her I was sorry for lying, and she said that we’d talk about it later. For the majority of the time that we sat together in the waiting room, there was silence between us. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. I think that had we talked more in that room – if I had just told her about Boxes or the night with the raft; if she had just told me more of what she knew – I think that things would have changed. But I didn’t know that any of those things mattered; they were just distant memories of strange adventures to me. So we sat there in silence, and she looked at me while I looked at the floor. She told me that she loved me and that I could call her whenever I wanted her to come get me.

As my mom was leaving, Veronica’s parents rushed in with the wide eyes of people who are attempting to see what is important in a room as quickly as possible. My mom must have called them after I had spoken with her. Veronica’s dad and my mom exchanged a few words that appeared to be quite serious, while Veronica’s mother talked to the person at the desk. Her mother was a nurse, but didn’t work at this hospital. I’m sure that she had tried to get Veronica transferred, but her condition was prohibitive.