間奏
“Zara—”
“Two blocks south on Marcus Ave., you’ll find my Challenger. Keys in the ignition. Hurry.”
“But I can—”
“You haven’t even had time to process it yet—you can’t donate any. Hurry the fuck up and get the car, because she needs a hospital and a transfusion, or she’ll die. If the bitch wants to off herself, she can do it with a gun like everyone else. Go!”
My body was moving. Head lolled to the side. I was light—so light. Weightless. Air running through my veins instead of blood. Fabric ripped, torn at my shoulder. Fingers pressing hard and pain was white hot and bright, sending darts over my vision, past my closed eyes.
“If you fucking die,” her harsh voice poured down on me, “I will send Ellie to drag your soul back from hell just so that I can pick on you because I don’t want to have to put up with a depressed, moping Nicolette all by myself. What if she makes me listen to Celine Dion or something? If her heart’s gonna go on, I don’t want to fucking hear about it. Not happening. So don’t die. Yet. I don’t fucking care what you do when you get out of Macamigon.”
Rain hadn’t stopped. It hammered down like ice on my skin. But there was something warm slicking over my shot shoulder, burning through my flesh.
It was also bright. I’d closed my eyes—it shouldn’t be this light. I should go where it’s dark.
Something cracked, like thunder started again, but an engine purred afterward.
“My fucking paint job—”
But she was interrupted by feet striking the ground, a body crouching next to mine, lifting me higher, higher, ladder rattling as they carried me up, and then I was floating, dangling, about to fall off another edge.
Falling. Always falling. I’d hit the pavement and crack my skull eventually.
Just not today.