Sliding Down the Sky (24 page)

“That’s who I was then. Fearless, foolhardy, invincible – or so I thought. I didn’t even give it a second thought, I just climbed on the back of his bike and we took off. Felt like I was strapped to a rocket, and I loved it. I loved the thrill, the speed, the danger – all of it. Right up until he took a corner too fast. The bike skidded and he lost control, and down we went.”

A shudder ran through me, a full-body tremor. I could remember everything. Every pain, every fear, every thought that had run through my head in the seconds before and after impact.

“My hand was caught between the bike and the road,” I murmured, staring at the prosthesis that did a poor job of replacing it. “The pain was unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I thought my bones were melting, then it just went numb. The paramedics arrived. They pumped me so full of morphine, I don’t even remember arriving at the hospital. I woke up from surgery and it was gone.”

I went into a kind of trance, reliving the moment as if it were just yesterday.

“I swore I could still feel it. Despite the drugs I was on, despite everything. I convinced myself they must’ve been able to save it because I could still bend my fingers. It wasn’t until I opened my eyes and looked down that I saw the bandages. Then I realised. Phantom sensation. I still get it sometimes. I can feel my hand as if it’s still there.”

Callum made a move as if to pull me closer, but I didn’t want that. I pulled away from him, backing up against the counter. I stared at the floor, my knees suddenly weak.

“I lost everything that night,” I whispered. “I lost my hand, my music, all of it. I threw it away. It was my fault, because I thought nothing could touch me. I thought I was bulletproof. Such bullshit. I was being punished –“

“Don’t say that,” he said, making another move towards me.

I stopped him with just a look.

“It’s true,” I said coldly. “You don’t understand. How could you? I can’t play. The music was in my head, my heart, my
soul
– it hummed through my veins
all
the time, but now it’s gone, because I thought I was above the rules. Jason died that night, giving me a joyride around the city, showing off because I encouraged him to. I’d never met him before that night, I had no idea who he was, but he had a family, he had friends who loved him, he had a
life
, and somehow, because I thought I was better than him, he’s dead, and that’s my fault, too.”

“It’s not your fault – it just happened. Shit like that just happens sometimes, it’s no one’s fault.“

“I ruined both our lives,” I said honestly, the reality of it slamming into my chest. “And now I have to live with this shit, every damn day. This is my penance for killing him.”

Callum’s eyes burned into mine, or maybe it was the other way around. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. I was balanced right on the edge of the knife, and I had this insane idea that he might be able to save me from falling.

“You’re not responsible for what happened.”

I sighed, a deep, bone-weary sigh that sucked all the residual strength right out of me. I couldn’t hold my head up anymore. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I wasn’t strong enough.

Callum’s hands were on my shoulders.

“Do you hear me?” he asked.

Why was he still here? He should’ve made some excuse by now and left. I was expecting that. Some things, some people, can’t be fixed.

“You don’t have to stay,” I whispered. “It’s late. You should go home.”

I stared at his chest, too tired to look up at him as his hands gently squeezed my shoulders.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

My heart soared and dipped like a bird in flight. I wanted him to stay more than anything, but I also wanted him to leave me alone. The contradiction was sucking at my stomach, like I was free-falling from a great height.

“Look at me, Sass.”

Slowly, I looked up. His eyes were dark blue, almost black in the moonlight that spilled in through the kitchen window. It made each and every whisker on his unshaven jaw stand out as if it had been drawn in pencil. He didn’t look real, and yet the way he was looking at me was very real.

It stole my breath.

“Let go,” he said tenderly. “Let it all go. It doesn’t mean you’re ever going to forget what happened. It’s part of you now, there’s no escaping that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get on with your life. You’re still here.”

Tears burned my eyes and I had no way of stopping them, not this time. I could feel the torrent building, the pain, the heartache, the shame of that night crawling over my skin, demanding more. More of me, more
from
me. The momentum was building, and I was powerless to stop it.

Then I was choking, sobbing but trying desperately not to because it felt like giving in, like giving up, and I wanted so much to be stronger than that. Callum pulled me into his arms and suddenly he was all around me, cocooning me from the nightmare that was my reality. The two worlds blended, the lines blurred, and I didn’t know which was which anymore. The very air around us felt like it was changing, and it scared me to death. Change terrified me, because every time it came knocking it took a little more from me, and I was at the stage where I had so little left in the tank.

I held on to him because I wanted to be rescued, from all of it.

I wanted him to be the one to rescue me.

“I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene.”

– Ray Charles

Callum

I lay on the couch in Tom’s house in the dark, listening. I’d sent Sass off to get some sleep, but I didn’t go with her. It wasn’t the right time and she was exhausted. She needed to sleep, to heal, and I didn’t want her to feel any pressure from me. She was under enough pressure as it was. Besides, she was sleeping in Jack’s old room. It was too weird.

She needed room to process. So did I, yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. She didn’t seem to mind when I said I was going to sleep on the couch. I think she was relieved. I couldn’t leave her, but I didn’t want to be far from her, either. Going home felt like it would’ve sent the wrong message, like I was backing away. I wanted her to know I was here in case she needed me, even though I had no clue what I was going to do or say if she did.

I ran my hand through my hair and stared at the ceiling. Guilt, panic attacks, asshole reporters, pain – both physical and mental. It made the loss of her hand seem almost trivial in comparison, one item on a very long list. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how that would affect a person.

I lay there for what felt like hours, turning things over and over in my head. At some point during the early hours, I must’ve finally fallen asleep.

When I woke up, it was still dark outside. In that shimmery twilight between asleep and awake, I heard singing. It was clear and true, but it wasn’t loud. I blinked into the darkness and searched for the source. I scanned the room, settling on an outline sitting at the piano.

It was Sass.

She was sitting with her back to me, singing. At first I didn’t recognise the song, wrapped as I was in the last vestiges of sleep. All I could hear was her voice, soft and true, hauntingly beautiful as it came at me through the darkness. It was as if it settled on my skin, the words and the melody raising goosebumps in their wake. Like Leo, her voice had an intensity, a clarity, a passion, drawn from somewhere deep within. She was incredible, her voice lilting one moment, strong and even the next.

Then it came to me. She was singing James Taylor’s
Something in the Way She Moves
. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

I lay there and listened for a few minutes, afraid to move in case I disturbed her. The passion in her voice was so deep and intense, I didn’t even know if she had seen me. Had she forgotten I was there?

“She’s asleep.”

Leo’s voice came from behind me and I pushed myself up. He was standing in the doorway, a silhouette against the darkness. He walked around the couch and sat down at the other end. He seemed calm, but I was the opposite.

“What?”

He looked over at me, a shadow with a head that moved my way.

“She does this,” he said, just loud enough that I could hear him over her voice. “When she’s stressed. I first noticed it when I stayed with her in her apartment, a few months after the accident. She’s sleep talking – sleep walking, sleep singing… whatever. She’s not awake. She has no idea what she’s doing.”

I looked over at Sass.

“She can’t hear us,” he said, reading my mind. “I’ve tried talking to her a hundred times, but she won’t answer when she’s like this. It’s like she’s in another world.”

Watching her, I could completely believe that. She continued to sing, her back to us.

“Figures that she’d sing this song,” he said. “We grew up listening to James Taylor, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell. Mom and Dad loved music. My Dad would play guitar, and we would sing. I haven’t heard her sing this in a while, though.”

My head was spinning, trying desperately to make sense of all of this.

“Does she know?” I asked. “I mean, when she wakes up, the next morning?”

“No.”

“You haven’t told her?”

He paused, and Sass’s soulful voice filled the void. When he answered, I could barely hear him.

“I’m too scared to. Maybe, if she knew, she’d stop. And I don’t want her to stop. She needs this.”

In the dark, the pain in his voice seemed much more obvious.

“Let’s go outside,” he said, standing up.

Reluctantly, I stood up and followed his shadow as we made our way out through the kitchen, Sass’s voice following us. He opened the back door and sat down on the step, leaving the door open so we could hear her. I sat down beside him, the cool air settling over my shoulders.

I ran my hand down my face and sighed.

“She won’t sing anymore,” Leo said. “Not when she’s awake, anyway. I try to get her to sing with me, like we used to growing up, but she won’t. I keep thinking that if she’s surrounded by music, she’ll find her way back to it somehow. I guess this is her release valve, her way of letting go of all the stuff that’s building up inside her. It’s a start, I guess. I hope. Time will tell.”

I stared out into the darkness of the backyard. The night was quiet, which given the hour wasn’t surprising. I couldn’t help but wish that Tom was here. He was always so good at this kind of thing. He could always find the sense within the chaos. A few words of wisdom, a well-chosen phrase or two, and it all seemed to be so much more manageable.

“She told me about the accident,” I said. “Last night, after you went to bed.”

“I know. I came out to see if she was okay, and I heard you guys talking. I didn’t hear everything that was said, but I’m glad she told you. You should know. It might help.”

“Help me, or her?”

“Both,” he said, after a moment.

“Why do you think she does this?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder into the house.

It was his turn to sigh.

“This is gonna sound kinda weird. I don’t even know if it’s gonna make any sense because – and don’t take this the wrong way – but I know this isn’t really your thing. You’re not a musician, you probably won’t get it.”

“Try me.”

“It’s the music,” he said hesitantly. “It’s not something you just play, it’s something you
feel
. It lives inside you, it’s the way you see the world and understand it, make sense of it. It’s like a filter through which every part of your life has to flow through in order to be understood.”

He was right. I didn’t get it, and he must’ve seen that, so he tried again.

“Music was everything to her. It was her livelihood, her hobby, her safety net, her coping mechanism. She lived it, breathed it, wrote it, played it, sang it – it came out of her as a way to deal with everything that happened to her. Puberty, falling in love, falling out of love, losing our parents, moving to the city, meeting new people, losing old friends, a sky-rocketing career – all of it. It was like a code book – every experience had to go through music to be understood. It was the way she expressed herself and understood everything, all at the same time. I know, because that’s what it is to me, and Sass and I are the same. That’s why it hurts so damn much to see her like this.”

I heard him suck in a deep breath, and I felt for him. I knew how much it hurt, to watch someone you love in so much pain and be unable to help.

“She’s got nothing to filter anything through anymore. She’s lost. She said the music’s gone – her
life
is gone, the life she knew anyway. She’s just… she’s trying to make sense of everything but she’s just wandering aimlessly in the dark, looking for the door.”

Jesus.

“Sometimes I can’t even bear to look at her,” he said quietly. “Every time I see her arm, I just get this God-awful sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and shit just gets way too real.”

He huffed out a breath and then sucked it back in again, like he was having trouble breathing.

“She says she feels guilty,” I said. “Because of what happened to Jason. She blames herself. She’s punishing herself.”

He just stared at his feet, nodding.

“I know.”

The singing stopped, and we both turned around to look into the house. A few moments later, a door closed at the other end of the house.

“She’s gone back to bed,” Leo said. “She won’t remember a thing in the morning.”

I had no idea what to say. I could understand why Leo didn’t want to tell her, but it felt like lying to her anyway.

“Please don’t tell her,” he said, reading my mind. “I don’t know what it’d do to her if she knew. She’s trying so damn hard right now, to move forward and put it all behind her. She’s got this thing about needing to plan everything, to be in control of everything, and this isn’t something she can control – at least not right now. It’s something she needs, whether she knows it or not, and I need to know she’s gonna be okay. As long as she’s got an outlet, I kinda think she will be. She has to be.”